EL  PVENTE  DEL  CVEKVO 


[See  page  132 


LEGENDS 

OF    THE 

CITY  OF  MEXICO 


COLLECTED  BY 

THOMAS      A.     JANVIER 


MEMBER   OF 
THE   FOLK-LORE   SOCIETY,    LONDON 


ILLUSTRATED   WITH    SIX    PICTURES    BY 

WALTER    APPLETON     CLARK 
AND      BY     PHOTOGRAPHS     OF     PLACE 


HARPER  6-  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

M  C  M  X 


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TO 

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332736 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


INTRODUCTION ix 

LEGEND  OF  DON  JUAN  MANUEL i 

LEGEND  OF  THE  OBEDIENT  DEAD  NUN 6 

LEGEND  OF  THE  PUENTE  DEL  CLERIGO n 

LEGEND  OF  THE  MULATA  DE  CORDOBA 15 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLEJON  DEL  MUERTO 22 

LEGEND  OF  THE  ALTAR  DEL  PERDON 30 

.LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLEJON  DEL  ARMADO 39 

LEGEND  OF  THE  ADUANA    DE   SANTO  DOMINGO    ...  43 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LA  QUEMADA     ....  52 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LA  CRUZ  VERDE     ....  59 

LEGEND  OF  THE  MUJER  HERRADA 64 

LEGEND  OF  THE  ACCURSED  BELL 69 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLEJON  DEL  PADRE  LECUONA      .     .  84 

LEGEND  OF  THE  LIVING  SPECTRE 96 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LOS  PARADOS 108 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LA  JOYA 112 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LA  MACHINCUEPA   .     .     .     .  116 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DEL  PUENTE  DEL  CUERVO    .     .  127 

LEGEND  OF  LA  LLORONA 134 


CONTENTS 


NOTES 

PAGE 

DON  JUAN  MANUEL 141 

ALTAR  DEL  PERDON 145 

ADUANA  DE  SANTO  DOMINGO 149 

LA  CRUZ  VERDE 149 

MUJER  HERRADA 150 

ACCURSED  BELL 153 

CALLEJON  DEL  PADRE  LECUONA 156 

LIVING  SPECTRE 159 

LA  LLORONA 162 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

DRAWINGS  BY  WALTER  APPLETON  CLARK 

LEGEND  OF    THE    CALLE   DEL   PUENTE    DEL  CUERVO  .         Frontispiece 

LEGEND  OF    THE    CALLE    DEL    PUENTE    DEL    CLE*RIGO  Facing  p.      14 

LEGEND  OF    THE    CALLEJON    DEL    ARMADO    ....                          4O 

LEGEND    OF    THE    MUJER    HERRADA "  66 

LEGEND  OF     THE     CALLEJON     DEL     PADRE     LECUONA          "              88 

LEGEND  OF    THE    CALLE    DE    LOS    PARADOS  ....          "          jo8 

PHOTOGRAPHS  OF  PLACE 

CAPILLA    DE    LA    ESPIRACION Facing  p.       4 

LA     CRUZ    VERDE "  60 

HOME    OF    DONA    MARIA "  I IO 

HOUSE    OF    DON    JUAN    MANUEL "  142 

DOORWAY,     HOUSE    OF    DON    JUAN    MANUEL       ...  "  144 

NO.    7    PUERTA    FALSA    DE    SANTO    DOMINGO        ...  "  152 

WHERE    THE    DEAD    MAN    WAS    CONFESSED    ....  "  156 


INTRODUCTION 

THESE  legends  of  the  City  of  Mexico  are 
of  my  finding,  not  of  my  making.  They 
are  genuine  folk-stories.  Each  one  of  them  is 
a  true  folk-growth  from  some  obscure  curious  or 
tragical  ancient  matter  that,  taking  hold  upon 
the  popular  imagination,  has  had  built  up  from 
it  among  the  people  a  story  satisfying  to  the 
popular  heart. 

Many  of  them  simply  are  historical  tradi- 
tions gone  wrong:  being  rooted  in  substantial 
facts  which  have  been  disguised  by  the  fanciful 
additions,  or  distorted  by  the  sheer  perversions, 
of  successive  generations  of  narrators  through 
the  passing  centuries.  Others  of  them  have 
for  their  kernel  some  unaccounted-for  strange 
happening  that,  appealing  to  the  popular  mind 
for  an  explanation,  has  been  explained  vari- 
ously by  various  imaginative  people  of  varying 
degrees  of  perception  and  of  intelligence:  whose 

[ix] 


INTRODUCTION 


diverse  elucidations  of  the  same  mystery  event- 
ually have  been  patched  together  into  a  single 
story — that  betrays  its  composite  origin  by  the 
inconsistencies  and  the  discrepancies  in  which 
it  abounds.  A  few  of  them — starting  out  bold- 
ly by  exalting  some  commonplace  occurrence 
into  a  marvel — practically  are  cut  from  the 
whole  cloth.  All  of  them — and  most  obviously 
the  most  incredible  of  them — have  the  quality 
that  gives  to  folk-stories  in  general  their  serious 
value:  they  reflect  accurately  the  tone  of 
thought,  and  exhibit  more  or  less  clearly  the 
customs  and  the  conditions,  of  the  time  to 
which  they  belong.  Among  the  older  people 
of  the  City  of  Mexico,  alike  the  lettered  and 
the  unlettered,  they  still  are  cherished  with  a 
warm  affection  and  are  told  with  a  lively  relish 
— to  which  is  added,  among  the  common  people, 
a  lively  faith.  The  too-sophisticated  younger 
generation,  unhappily,  is  neglectful  and  even 
scornful  of  them.  Soon,  as  oral  tradition,  they 
will  be  lost. 

Most  fortunately,  the  permanent  preserva- 
tion in  print  of  these  legends — and  of  many 
more  of  the  same  sort — long  since  was  assured. 
Because  of  the  serious  meaning  that  is  in 

[x] 


INTRODUCTION 


them,  as  side-lights  on  history  and  on  sociology, 
they  have  been  collected  seriously  by  learned 
antiquarians — notably  by  Don  Luis  Gonzalez 
Obregdn  and  by  Don  Manuel  Rivera  Cambas— 
who  have  searched  and  sifted  them;  and  who 
have  set  forth,  so  far  as  it  could  be  discovered, 
their  underlying  germs  of  truth.  By  the  poets 
—to  whom,  naturally,  they  have  made  a 
strong  appeal — they  have  been  preserved  in  a 
way  more  in  keeping  with  their  fanciful  essence : 
as  may  be  seen — again  to  cite  two  authors  of 
recognized  eminence — in  the  delightful  metrical 
renderings  of  many  of  them  by  Don  Vicente 
Riva  Palacio,  and  in  the  round  threescore  of 
them  that  Don  Juan  de  Dios  Peza  has  recast 
into  charming  verse.  By  other  writers  of  dis- 
tinction, not  antiquarians  nor  poets,  various 
collections  of  them  have  been  made — of  which 
the  best  is  the  sympathetic  work  of  Don  Angel 
R.  de  Arellano — in  a  purely  popular  form.  By 
the  playwrights  have  been  made  from  the  more 
romantic  of  them — as  the  legend  of  Don  Juan 
Manuel — perennially  popular  plays.  By  minor 
writers,  in  prose  and  in  verse,  their  tellings  and 
retellings  are  without  end. 

While  the  oral  transmission  of  the  legends 

[xi] 


N  PRODUCTION 


among  the  common  people — by  heightening 
always  the  note  of  the  marvellous — has  tended 
to  improve  them,  the  bandying  about  in  print 
to  which  they  have  been  subjected  has  worked 
a  change  in  them  that  distinctly  is  for  the 
worse.  In  their  written  form  they  have  ac- 
quired an  artificiality  that  directly  is  at  odds 
with  their  natural  simplicity;  while  the  sleek- 
ing of  their  essential  roughnesses,  and  the 
abatement  of  their  equally  essential  inconsist- 
encies and  contradictions,  has  weakened  pre- 
cisely the  qualities  which  give  to  them  their 
especial  character  and  their  peculiar  charm. 

The  best  versions  of  them,  therefore,  are 
those  which  are  current  among  the  common 
people:  who  were  the  makers  of  them  in  the 
beginning;  who — passing  them  from  heart  to' 
lip  and  from  lip  to  heart  again  through  the 
centuries — have  retained  in  them  the  subtle 
pith  that  clearly  distinguishes  a  built-up  folk- 
story  from  a  story  made  by  one  mind  at  a 
single  melting;  whose  artless  telling  of  them— 
abrupt,  inconsequent,  full  of  repetitions  and  of 
contradictions  —  preserves  the  full  flavor  of 
their  patchwork  origin ;  and,  most  important  of 
all,  whose  simple- souled  faith  in  their  verity  is 

[xii] 


INTRODUCTION 


of  the  selfsame  spirit  in  which  they  were  made. 
These  are  the  versions  which  I  have  tried  here 
to  reproduce  in  feeling  and  in  phrase. 

My  first  winter  in  Mexico,  twenty-five  years 
ago,  was  spent  in  Monterey;  and  there,  in  a 
small  way,  my  collection  of  Mexican  folk-lore 
was  begun.  My  gathering  at  that  time  con- 
sisted mainly  of  superstitious  beliefs — omens, 
house-charms,  the  evil  eye,  the  unlucky  day— 
but  it  included  a  version  of  the  story  of  La 
Llorona  essentially  identical  with  the  version, 
here  given,  that  I  later  found  current  in  the 
City  of  Mexico.  The  sources  from  which  I 
drew  in  Monterey  were  three  or  four  old,  and 
old-fashioned,  women  with  whom  my  wife 
established  such  friendly  relations  as  to  win 
them  into  freely  confidential  talk  with  her; 
the  most  abundant  yield  coming  from  a  kindly 
old  Dona  Miguelita  (she  was  given  always 
the  affectionate  diminutive) ,  who  was  attached 
loosely  as  a  sort  of  brevet  grandmother  to  the 
family  with  whom  we  were  lodged.  Had  I 
been  alone  I  should  not  have  been  able  to  ex- 
tract any  information  from  these  old  people. 
It  would  have  been  impossible  to  convince 

I xiii  ] 


INTRODUCTION 


them  that  such  matters  could  be  regarded  with 
anything  but  contempt  by  a  man. 

In  like  manner,  later,  from  a  most  valuable 
source  in  the  City  of  Mexico,  my  information 
was  to  be  had  only  at  second-hand.  This 
source  was  our  dear  Jose* fa  Correa,  who  during 
four  successive  winters  at  once  was  our  washer- 
woman and  our  friend.  Josefa's  semi-weekly 
visits  gave  us  always  a  warm  pleasure ;  and  her 
talk — of  which  she  was  no  miser — gave  us 
always  much  of  interest  to  ponder  upon:  she 
being  a  very  wise  old  woman,  with  views  of  life 
that  were  broad  and  sound.  As  she  was  pre- 
cisely of  the  class  in  which  the  folk-stories  of 
the  city  originated,  she  was  the  best  of  author- 
ities for  the  current  popular  versions  of  them: 
but  always  was  it  through  my  wife  that  her 
tellings  of  them  came  to  me.  Various  other 
old  women,  encountered  casually,  similarly 
were  put  under  contribution  by  my  wife  for 
my  purposes.  One  of  the  most  useful  was  a 
draggled  old  seller  of  rebozos;  another,  of  equal 
value,  was  a  friendly  old  body  whom  we  fell 
in  with  at  a  railway  station  while  waiting 
through  two  hours  for  a  vagrant  train.  To  me 
all  of  these  women  would  have  been  sealed 

[xiv] 


INTRODUCTION 


books;  I  could  have  got  nothing  from  them 
without  my  wife's  help. 

For  that  help,  and  for  the  help  that  she  has 
given  me  in  searching  and  in  collating  my 
authorities  for  the  Legends  and  for  the  Notes 
relating  to  them,  I  am  very  grateful  to  her. 

To  my  friend  and  fellow-lover  of  things 
ancient  and  marvellous,  Gilberto  Cano,  I  am 
under  signal  obligations.  In  addition  to  his 
nice  appreciation  and  his  wide  knowledge  of 
such  matters,  this  excellent  man — twenty-four 
years  ago,  and  later — was  the  best  waiter  at 
the  Hotel  del  Cafe  Anglais.  (It  is  gone,  now, 
that  admirable  little  hotel  over  which  the  brave 
Monsieur  Gatillon  so  admirably  presided — and 
the  City  of  Mexico  distinctly  is  the  worse  for 
its  loss.)  Our  acquaintance,  that  had  its  be- 
ginning in  my  encounters  with  him  in  his 
professional  capacity,  soon  ripened  into  a  real 
friendship — still  enduring — along  the  line  of 
similarity  of  tastes.  His  intelligent  answers 
to  my  questions  about  one  or  another  of  the 
many  old  buildings  which  attracted  our  atten- 
tion in  the  course  of  our  walks  about  the  city- 
then  all  new  to  us — early  impressed  upon  me  a 
serious  respect  for  his  antiquarian  attainments ; 

[XV] 


INTRODUCTION 


and  this  respect  was  increased  when,  after 
making  a  hesitant  offer  of  them  that  I  accepted 
eagerly,  he  lent  to  us  several  excellent  books 
treating  of  the  ancient  matters  in  which  we  were 
interested:  explaining,  modestly,  that  these 
books  were  his  own;  and  that  he  had  bought 
them  in  order  that  he  might  acquire  an  ac- 
curate knowledge  of  the  city  in  which  he  had 
been  born  and  in  which  for  all  his  life  he  had 
lived.  As  my  own  knowledge  grew,  I  found 
that  in  every  instance  he  had  answered  my 
questions  correctly;  and  the  books  which  he 
had  lent  to  me  were  certified  to,  later,  by  my 
erudite  friend  Don  Jose*  Maria  Vigil,  Director 
of  the  Biblioteca  Nacional,  as  standard  au- 
thorities— and  I  bought  copies  of  all  of  them 
to  add  to  the  collection  of  Mexicana  that  I  then 
was  beginning  to  form. 

Gilberto  was  so  obliging  as  to  spend  several 
afternoons  in  our  quarters — coming  to  us  in  the 
dull  time  between  luncheon  and  dinner  when 
his  professional  duties  were  in  abeyance — that 
I  might  write  at  his  dictation  some  of  the 
many  folk-traditions  with  which  his  mind  was 
stored.  Like  our  dear  Jose'fa,  he  was  an 
absolute  authority  on  the  current  popular 

[  xvi  ] 


NTRODUCTION 


versions,  and  he  seemed  to  share  her  faith  in 
them;  but  he  told  them — because  of  his  sub- 
stantial knowledge  of  Mexican  history — more 
precisely  than  she  told  them,  and  with  an 
appreciative  understanding  of  their  antiqua- 
rian interest  that  was  quite  beyond  her 
grasp. 

He  was  a  small  man,  our  Gilberto,  with  a 
low  and  gentle  voice,  and  a  manner  that  was 
gentle  also — both  in  the  literal  and  in  the  finer 
sense  of  the  word.  In  the  thrilling  portions 
of  his  stories  he  would  lean  forward,  his  voice 
would  deepen  and  gather  earnestness,  his 
bright  brown  eyes  would  grow  brighter,  and 
his  gestures — never  violent,  and  always  appro- 
priate— would  enlarge  the  meaning  of  his 
words.  With  the  instinct  of  a  well-bred  man 
he  invariably  addressed  himself  to  my  wife; 
and  through  his  discourse  ran  a  constant  re- 
frain of  "and  so  it  was,  Senorita"  —pues  si, 
Senorita — that  made  a  point  of  departure  for 
each  fresh  turn  in  the  narrative,  and  at  the 
same  time  gave  to  what  he  was  telling  an  air 
of  affirmative  finality.  Usually  he  ended  with 
a  few  words  of  comment — enlightening  as  ex- 
hibiting the  popular  viewpoint — either  upon 

i  [  xvii  ] 


INTRODUCTION 


the  matter  of  his  story  or  by  way  of  emphasiz- 
ing its  verity. 

His  tellings  ranged  widely:  from  such  im- 
portant legends  as  those  of  Don  Juan  Manuel 
and  La  Llorona — his  versions  of  which  are 
given  in  my  text — to  such  minor  matters  as 
the  encounter  of  his  own  brother  with  a  freak- 
ish ghost  who  carried  the  bed  on  which  the 
brother  was  sleeping  from  one  part  of  the  house 
to  another.  All  the  knowledge  being  on  his 
side,  I  could  give  him  little  guidance — and 
whatever  happened  to  come  into  his  head,  in 
the  way  of  the  marvellous,  at  once  came  out 
of  it  again  for  my  benefit.  Some  of  his  stories, 
while  exhaustively  complete,  and  undeniably 
logical,  were  almost  startling  in  their  elemental 
brevity — as  the  following:  "  Once  some  masons 
were  pulling  down  an  old  house,  and  in  the  wall 
they  found  many  boxes  of  money.  After  that, 
those  masons  were  rich  "!  In  justice  I  should 
add  that  this  succinct  narrative  merely  was 
thrown  in,  as  a  make-weight,  at  the  end  of  a 
long  and  dramatic  hidden-treasure  story — in 
which  a  kindly  old  ghost-lady,  the  hider  of  the 
treasure,  had  a  leading  part. 

Because    of    the    intelligent    interest    that 

[  xviii  ] 


INTRODUCTION 


Gilberto  took  in  my  folk-lore  collecting,  it  was 
a  source  of  keen  regret  to  him  that  our  meeting 
had  not  come  a  little  earlier,  only  two  years 
earlier,  during  the  lifetime  of  his  great-aunt: 
who  had  known — as  he  put  it  comprehensively 
—all  the  stories  about  the  city  that  ever  were 
told.  I  too  grieved,  and  I  shall  grieve  always, 
because  that  ancient  person  was  cut  off  from 
earth  before  I  could  have  the  happiness  of 
garnering  the  traditionary  wisdom  with  which 
she  was  so  full  charged.  But  my  grief  is 
softened — and  even  is  tinctured  with  a  warm 
thankfulness — by  the  fact  that  a  great  deal  of 
it  was  saved  to  me  by  my  fortunate  encounter 
with  her  grand-nephew:  who  so  faithfully  had 
treasured  in  his  heart  her  ancient  sayings; 
and  who  so  freely — to  the  winning  of  my 
lasting  gratitude— gave  them  to  me  for  the 
enrichment  of  my  own  store. 

NEW  YORK,  September  26,  1909. 


LEGENDS   OF  THE    CITY   OF 
MEXICO 


LEGENDS    OF    THE 

CITY    OF    MEXICO 

LEGEND    OF    DON    JUAN    MANUEL1 

THIS     Don    Juan    Manuel,    Senor,    was     a 
rich  and  worthy  gentleman  who   had  the 
bad   vice  of   killing  people.     Every  night   at 
eleven   o'clock,    when   the    Palace   clock   was 
striking,  he  went  out  from  his  magnificent  house 
—as  you  know,  Sefior,  it  still  is  standing  in  the 
street   that    has   been   named   after   him — all 
muffled  in  his  cloak,  and  under  it  his  dagger  in 
his  hand. 

Then  he  would  meet  one,  in  the  dark  street, 
and  would  ask  him  politely:  "What  is  the 
hour  of  the  night?"  And  that  person,  having 
heard  the  striking  of  the  clock,  would  answer: 
"It  is  eleven  hours  of  the  night."  And  Don 

'See  Note  I. 
[i] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

Juan  Manuel  would  say  to  him:  "Senor,  you 
are  fortunate  above  all  men,  because  you  know 
precisely  the  hour  at  which  you  die!"  Then 
he  would  thrust  with  his  dagger — and  then, 
leaving  the  dead  gentleman  lying  in  the  street, 
he  would  come  back  again  into  his  own  home. 
And  this  bad  vice  of  Don  Juan  Manuel's  of 
killing  people  went  on,  Senor,  for  a  great 
many  years. 

Living  with  Don  Juan  Manuel  was  a  nephew 
whom  he  dearly  loved.  Every  night  they 
supped  together.  Later,  the  nephew  would 
go  forth  to  see  one  or  another  of  his  friends; 
and,  still  later,  Don  Juan  Manuel  would  go 
forth  to  kill  some  man.  One  night  the  nephew 
did  not  come  home.  Don  Juan  Manuel  was 
uneasy  because  of  his  not  coming,  fearing  for 
him.  In  the  early  morning  the  city  watch 
knocked  at  Don  Juan  Manuel's  door,  bringing 
there  the  dead  body  of  the  nephew — with  a 
wound  in  the  heart  of  him  that  had  killed  him. 
And  when  they  told  where  his  body  had  been 
found,  Don  Juan  Manuel  knew  that  he  himself 
—not  knowing  him  in  the  darkness — had 
killed  his  own  nephew  whom  he  so  loved. 

Then  Don  Juan  Manuel  saw  that  he  had 
[a] 


DON    JUAN    MANUEL 


been  leading  a  bad  life:  and  he  went  to  the 
Father  to  whom  he  confessed  and  confessed 
all  the  killings  that  he  had  done.  Then  the 
Father  put  a  penance  upon  him:  That  at  mid- 
night he  should  go  alone  through  the  streets  un- 
til he  was  come  to  the  chapel  of  the  Espiracidn 
(it  faces  upon  the  Plazuela  de  Santo  Domingo, 
Senor;  and,  in  those  days,  before  it  was  a 
gallows) ;  and  that  he  should  kneel  in  front  of 
that  chapel,  beneath  the  gallows;  and  that, 
so  kneeling,  he  should  tell  his  rosary  through. 
And  Don  Juan  Manuel  was  pleased  because 
so  light  a  penance  had  been  put  upon  him, 
and  thought  soon  to  have  peace  again  in  his 
soul. 

But  that  night,  at  midnight,  when  he  set 
forth  to  do  his  penance,  no  sooner  was  he  come 
out  from  his  own  door  than  voices  sounded  in 
his  ears,  and  near  him  was  the  terrible  ringing 
of  a  little  bell.  And  he  knew  that  the  voices 
which  troubled  him  were  those  of  the  ones 
whom  he  had  killed.  And  the  voices  sounded 
in  his  ears  so  wofully,  and  the  ringing  of  the 
little  bell  was  so  terrible,  that  he  could  not 
keep  onward.  Having  gone  a  little  way,  his 
stomach  was  tormented  by  the  fear  that  was 

[3] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

upon  him  and  he  came  back  again  to  his  own 
home. 

Then,  the  next  day,  he  told  the  Father  what 
had  happened,  and  that  he  could  not  do  that 
penance,  and  asked  that  another  be  put  upon 
him.  But  the  Father  denied  him  any  other 
penance;  and  bade  him  do  that  which  was  set 
for  him — or  die  in  his  sin  and  go  forever  to  hell ! 
Then  Don  Juan  Manuel  again  tried  to  do  his 
penance,  and  that  time  got  a  half  of  the  way 
to  the  chapel  of  the  Espiracidn ;  and  then  again 
turned  backward  to  his  home,  because  of  those 
woful  voices  and  the  terrible  ringing  of  that 
little  bell.  And  so  again  he  asked  that  he  be 
given  another  penance;  and  again  it  was  denied 
to  him;  and  again — getting  that  night  three- 
quarters  of  the  way  to  the  chapel — he  tried  to 
do  what  he  was  bidden  to  do.  But  he  could 
not  do  it,  because  of  the  woful  voices  and  the 
terrible  ringing  of  the  little  bell. 

Then  went  he  for  the  last  time  to  the  Father 
to  beg  for  another  penance;  and  for  the  last 
time  it  was  denied  to  him;  and  for  the  last  time 
he  set  forth  from  his  house  at  midnight  to  go 
to  the  chapel  of  the  Espiracidn,  and  in  front  of 
it,  kneeling  beneath  the  gallows,  to  tell  his 

[4] 


CAPILLA       DE      LA       ESPIRACION 


DON    JUAN    MANUEL 


rosary  through.  And  that  night,  Senor,  was 
the  very  worst  night  of  all!  The  voices  were 
so  loud  and  so  very  woful  that  he  was  in  weak 
dread  of  them,  and  he  shook  with  fear,  and  his 
stomach  was  tormented  because  of  the  terrible 
ringing  of  the  little  bell.  But  he  pressed  on— 
you  see,  Senor,  it  was  the  only  way  to  save  his 
soul  from  blistering  in  hell  through  all  eternity 
—until  he  was  come  to  the  Plazuela  de  Santo 
Domingo;  and  there,  in  front  of  the  chapel  of 
the  Espiracidn,  beneath  the  gallows,  he  knelt 
down  upon  his  knees  and  told  his  rosary 
through. 

And  in  the  morning,  Senor,  all  the  city  was 
astonished,  and  everybody — from  the  Viceroy 
down  to  the  cargadores — came  running  to  the 
Plazuela  de  Santo  Domingo,  where  was  a  sight 
to  see!  And  the  sight  was  Don  Juan  Manuel 
hanging  dead  on  the  gallows — where  the  angels 
themselves  had  hung  him,  Senor,  because  of  his 
sins ! 


LEGEND   OF   THE   OBEDIENT   DEAL)   NUN 

IT  was  after  she  was  dead,  Senor,  that  this 
nun  did  what  she  was  told  to  do  by  the 
Mother  Superior,  and  that  is  why  it  was  a 
miracle.  Also,  it  proved  her  goodness  and  her 
holiness — though,  to  be  sure,  there  was  no 
need  for  her  to  take  the  trouble  to  prove  those 
matters,  because  everybody  knew  about  them 
before  she  died. 

My  grandmother  told  me  that  this  wonder 
happened  in  the  convent  of  Santa  Brigida  when 
her  mother  was  a  little  girl ;  therefore  you  will 
perceive,  Senor,  that  it  did  not  occur  yesterday. 
In  those  times  the  convent  of  Santa  Brigida 
was  most  flourishing — being  big,  and  full  of 
nuns,  and  with  more  money  than  was  needed 
for  the  keeping  of  it  and  for  the  great  giving 
of  charity  that  there  was  at  its  doors.  And 
now,  as  you  know,  Senor,  there  is  no  convent 
at  all  and  only  the  church  remains.  However, 
it  was  in  the  church  .that  the  miracle  hap- 

[6] 


THE    OBEDIENT    DEAD    NUN 

pened,  and  it  is  in  the  choir  that  Sor  Teresa's 
bones  lie  buried  in  the  coffin  that  was  too  short 
for  her — and  so  it  is  clear  that  this  story  is  true. 
The  way  of  it  all,  Senor,  was  this:  The 
Senorita  Teresa  Ysabel  de  Villavicencio — so 
she  was  called  in  the  world,  and  in  religion  she 
still  kept  her  christened  name — was  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  very  rich  hacendado  of  Vera  Cruz.  She 
was  very  tall — it  was  her  tallness  that  made 
the  whole  trouble — and  she  also  was  very 
beautiful;  and  she. went  to  Santa  Brigida  and 
took  the  vows  there  because  of  an  undeceiving 
in  love.  The  young  gentleman  whom  she 
came  to  know  was  unworthy  of  her  was  the 
Senor  Carraza,  and  he  was  the  Librarian  to  the 
Doctors  in  the  Royal  and  Pontifical  Uni- 
versity— which  should  have  made  him  a  good 
man.  What  he  did  that  was  not  good,  Senor, 
I  do  not  know.  But  it  was  something  that 
sent  Sor  Teresa  in  a  hurry  into  the  convent: 
and  when  she  got  there  she  was  so  devout  and 
so  well-behaved  that  the  Mother  Superior 
held  her  up  to  all  the  other  nuns  for  a  pattern 
— and  especially  for  her  humility  and  her 
obedience.  Whatever  she  was  told  to  do,  she 
did;  and  that  without  one  single  word. 

[7! 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

Well,  Senor,  it  happened  that  the  convent 
was  making  ready,  on  a  day,  for  the  great 
festival  of  Nuestra  Senora  de  Guadalupe;  and 
in  the  midst  of  all  the  whirring  and  buzzing 
Sor  Teresa  said  suddenly — and  everybody  was 
amazed  and  wonder-struck  when  she  said  it— 
that  though  she  was  helping  to  make  ready 
for  that  festival  she  would  not  live  to  take  part 
in  it,  because  the  very  last  of  her  hours  on  earth 
was  almost  come.  And  a  little  later — lying 
on  her  hard  wooden  bed  and  wearing  beneath 
her  habit  the  wired  shirt  of  a  penitent,  with 
all  the  community  sorrowing  around  her— 
Sor  Teresa  died  just  as  she  said  she  would  die : 
without  there  being  anything  the  matter  with 
her  at  all! 

Because  of  the  festival  that  was  coming,  it 
was  necessary  that  she  should  be  buried  that 
very  night.  Therefore  they  made  ready  a 
comfortable  grave  for  her;  and  they  sent  to 
the  carpenter  for  a  coffin  for  her,  and  the 
coffin  came.  And  it  was  then,  Senor,  that 
the  trouble  began.  Perhaps,  because  she  was 
so  very  tall  a  lady,  the  carpenter  thought  that 
the  measure  had  not  been  taken  properly. 
Perhaps,  being  all  so  flurried,  they  really  had 

[8] 


THE    OBEDIENT    DEAD    NUN 

got  the  measure  wrong.  Anyhow,  whatever 
may  have  set  the  matter  crooked,  Sor  Teresa 
would  not  go  into  her  coffin:  and  as  night  was 
near,  and  there  was  no  time  to  make  another 
one,  they  all  of  them  were  at  their  very  wits' 
end  to  know  what  to  do.  So  there  they  all 
stood,  looking  at  Sor  Teresa;  and  there  Sor 
Teresa  lay,  with  her  holy  feet  sticking  straight 
out  far  beyond  the  end  of  the  coffin ;  and  night 
was  coming  in  a  hurry ;  and  next  day  would  be 
the  festival — and  nobody  could  see  how  the 
matter  was  going  to  end! 

Then  a  wise  old  nun  came  to  the  Mother 
Superior  and  whispered  to  her:  telling  her  that 
as  in  life  Sor  Teresa  had  been  above  all  else 
perfect  in  obedience,  so,  probably,  would  she 
be  perfect  in  obedience  even  in  death;  and  ad- 
vising that  a  command  should  be  put  upon  her 
to  fit  into  her  coffin  then  and  there.  And  the 
old  nun  said,  what  was  quite  true  and  reason- 
able, that  even  if  Sor  Teresa  did  not  do  what 
she  was  told  to  do,  no  harm  could  come  of  it— 
as  but  little  time  would  be  lost  in  making  trial 
with  her,  and  the  case  would  be  the  same  after 
their  failure  as  it  was  before.  Therefore  the 
Mother  Superior  agreed  to  try  what  that  wise 

[9] 


LEGENDS     OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

old  nun  advised.  And  so,  Senor — all  the 
community  standing  round  about,  and  the 
candle  of  Nuestro  Amo  being  lighted — the 
Mother  Superior  said  in  a  grave  voice  slowly: 
"  Daughter,  as  in  life  thou  gavest  us  always  an 
example  of  humility  and  obedience,  now  I  order 
and  command  thee,  by  thy  vow  of  obedience, 
to  retire  decorously  within  thy  coffin:  that  so 
we  may  bury  thee,  and  that  thou  mayest  rest 
in  peace!" 

And  then,  Senor,  before  the  eyes  of  all  of 
them,  Sor  Teresa  slowly  began  to  shrink  shorter 
— to  the  very  letter  of  the  Mother  Superior's 
order  and  command!  Slowly  her  holy  feet 
drew  in  from  beyond  the  end  of  the  coffin;  and 
then  they  drew  to  the  very  edge  of  it;  and  then 
they  drew  over  the  edge  of  it;  and  then  they 
fell  down  briskly  upon  the  bottom  of  it  with  a 
sanctified  and  most  pious  little  bang.  And 
so  there  she  was,  shrunk  just  as  short  as  she 
had  been  ordered  to  shrink,  fitting  into  her 
coffin  as  cozily  as  you  please!  Then  they 
buried  her,  as  I  have  told  you,  Senor,  in  the 
comfortable  grave  in  the  choir  that  was  waiting 
for  her — and  there  her  blessed  shrunken  bones 
are  lying  now. 

[10] 


LEGEND  OF  THE  PUENTE  DEL  CLERIGO 

THIS  priest  who  was  murdered  and  thrown 
over  the  bridge,  Senor,  was  a  very  good 
man,  and  there  was  very  little  excuse  for 
murdering  him.  Moreover,  he  belonged  to  a 
most  respectable  family,  and  so  did  the  gentle- 
man who  murdered  him,  and  so  did  the  young 
lady;  and  because  of  all  that,  and  because  at 
the  best  of  times  the  killing  of  a  priest  is  sacri- 
lege, the  scandal  of  that  murder  made  a  stir 
in  the  whole  town. 

At  that  time — it  was  some  hundreds  of  years 
ago,  Senor — there  lived  in  the  street  that  now 
is  called,  because  of  it  all,  the  street  of  the 
Puente  del  Clerigo,  a  very  beautiful  young  lady 
who  was  named  Dona  Margarita  Jduregui. 
And  she,  being  an  orphan,  dwelt  with  her  uncle, 
this  priest :  who  was  named  Don  Juan  de  Nava 
and  was  a  person  of  rank,  being  a  caballero 
of  the  orders  of  Santiago  and  Calatrava.  In 

those  days  there  were  few  houses  upon  that 

[n] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

street,  which  was  the  causeway  between  the 
City  and  the  Indian  town  of  Tlaltelolco;  and 
for  the  greater  safety  of  the  Spaniards  dwelling 
in  the  City  there  was  a  wide  ditch,  that  this 
bridge  crossed,  between  them  and  the  Indian 
town.  Long  ago,  Senor,  Tlaltelolco  became  a 
part  of  the  City;  and  the  ditch,  and  the  bridge 
over  it,  are  gone. 

Now  it  happened  that  at  the  court  of  the 
Viceroy  was  a  noble  young  Portuguese  gentle- 
man, who  had  great  riches  and  two  titles,  named 
Don  Duarte  de  Sarraza;  and  the  Viceroy,  who 
was  the  Conde  de  Salvatierra,  very  much  es- 
teemed him  because  he  was  of  a  loyal  nature 
and  of  good  heart.  Therefore  this  noble  young 
gentleman  fell  in  love  with  Dona  Margarita, 
arid  she  with  him;  but  her  uncle,  the  Padre  Don 
Juan,  knowing  that  Don  Duarte  was  a  vicious 
young  man — a  gambler,  and  in  other  ways 
what  he  should  not  have  been — forbade  his 
niece  to  have  anything  to  do  with  him.  So 
things  rested  for  a  while  on  those  terms,  and 
Don  Duarte  did  not  like  it  at  all. 

Well,  it  happened  on  a  night,  Senor,  that 
Don  Duarte  was  at  the  window  of  Dona  Mar- 
garita, telling  his  love  for  her  through  the 

[*».] 


THE    PUENTE    DEL    CLERIGO 

grating;  and  while  he  was  so  engaged  he  saw 
Padre  Don  Juan  coming  home  along  the  cause- 
way by  the  light  of  the  stars.  Then  that 
wicked  young  man  went  to  where  the  bridge 
was,  and  when  the  Padre  was  come  to  the 
bridge  he  sprang  upon  him  and  drove  his  dag- 
ger deep  into  his  skull.  The  dagger  was  nailed 
so  fast  there,  Sefior,  that  he  could  not  drag  it 
loose  again;  and  so  he  bundled  the  dead  priest 
over  the  wall  of  the  bridge  and  into  the  water 
with  the  dagger  still  sticking  in  the  skull  of 
him;  and  then  he  went  his  way  to  his  home. 

Not  wishing  to  have  it  thought  that  he  had 
committed  that  murder,  Don  Duarte  did  not 
go  near  Dona  Margarita  for  almost  a  whole 
year.  And  then — because  his  love  for  her 
would  not  suffer  him  to  wait  away  from  her 
longer — he  went  in  the  night-time  to  meet  her 
once  more  at  her  window;  and  he  had  in  his 
heart  the  wicked  purpose  to  make  her  come 
out  to  him,  and  then  to  carry  her  off. 

That  did  not  happen — and  what  did  happen 
is  a  terrible  mystery.  All  that  is  known  about 
it  is  this:  Very  early  in  the  morning  the  neigh- 
bors living  thereabout  found  Don  Duarte  dead 
on  the  Bridge  of  the  Cleric;  and  holding  him 

[13] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

fast,  a  bony  knee  on  his  breast  and  two  bony 
hands  at  his  throat  strangling  him,  was  a 
skeleton.  And  the  skeleton,  Senor,  was  dressed 
in  a  black  cassock,  such  as  only  clerics  wear, 
and  in  the  skull  of  it  a  rusty  dagger  was  nailed 
fast.  Therefore  it  became  generally  known  that 
Don  Duarte  had  murdered  the  Padre  Don 
Juan;  and  that  the  skeleton  of  the  Padre  Don 
Juan  had  killed  Don  Duarte  in  just  revenge. 


LEGEND   OF  THE   MULATA  DE  CORDOBA 

IT  is  well  known,  Senor,  that  this  Mulata  of 
Cordoba,  being  a  very  beautiful  woman, 
was  in  close  touch  with  the  devil.  She  dwelt 
in  Cordoba — the  town  not  far  from  Vera  Cruz, 
where  coffee  and  very  good  mangos  are  grown 
—and  she  was  born  so  long  ago  that  the  very 
oldest  man  now  living  was  not  then  alive.  No 
one  knew  who  was  her  father,  or  who  was  her 
mother,  or  where  she  came  from.  So  she  was 
called  La  Mulata  de  Cordoba — and  that  was 
all.  One  of  the  wonders  of  her  was  that  the 
years  passed  her  without  marking  her,  and  she 
never  grew  old. 

She  led  a  very  good  life,  helping  every  one 
who  was  in  trouble,  and  giving  food  to  the 
hungry  ones;  and  she  dressed  in  modest  clothes 
simply,  and  always  was  most  neat  and  clean. 
She  was  a  very  wicked  witch — and  beyond  that 
nobody  really  knew  anything  about  her  at  all. 
On  the  same  day,  and  at  the  same  hour,  she 

[15] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

would  be  seen  by  different  people  in  different 
places  widely  apart — as  here  in  the  City,  and  in 
Cdrdoba,  and  elsewhere  variously — all  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  moment  of  time.  She  also  was 
seen  flying  through  the  air,  high  above  the 
roofs  of  the  houses,  with  sparks  flashing  from 
her  black  eyes.  Moreover,  every  night  the 
devil  visited  her:  as  was  known  generally, 
because  at  night  her  neighbors  observed  that 
through  the  chinks  in  the  tight-shut  doors  and 
windows  of  her  house  there  shone  a  bright  light 
— as  though  all  the  inside  of  the  house  were 
filled  with  flames.  She  went  to  mass  regularly, 
and  at  the  proper  seasons  partook  of  the 
Sacrament.  She  disdained  everybody;  and 
because  of  her  disdainings  it  was  believed  that 
the  master  of  her  beauty  was  the  Lord  of 
Darkness ;  and  that  seemed  reasonable.  Every 
single  one  of  the  young  men  was  mad  about  her, 
and  she  had  a  train  of  lovers  from  which  she 
could  pick  and  choose.  All  wonders  were  told 
of  her.  She  was  so  powerful,  and  could  work 
such  prodigies,  that  she  was  spoken  about- 
just  as  though  she  had  been  the  blessed  Santa 
Rita  de  Cascia — as  the  Advocate  of  Impossible 
Things !  Old  maids  went  to  her  who  sought  for 

[16] 


THE    MULATA    DE    CORDOBA 

husbands;  poor  ladies  who  longed  for  jewels  and 
fine  dresses  that  they  might  go  to  the  court  of 
the  Viceroy;  miners  that  they  might  find  silver; 
old  soldiers,  set  aside  for  rustiness,  to  get  new 
commands-^-so  that  the  saying,  "/  am  not  the 
Mulata  of  Cordoba!"  is  the  answer  when  any 
one  asks  an  impossible  favor  even  now.  y 

How  it  came  about,  Senor,  no  one  ever  knew. 
What  every  one  did  know  was  that,  on  a  day, 
the  Mulata  was  brought  from  Cordoba  here 
to  the  City  and  was  cast  into  the  prison  of  the 
Holy  Office.  That  was  a  piece  of  news  that 
made  a  stir !  Some  said  that  a  disdained  lover 
had  denounced  her  to  the  Inquisition.  Others 
said  that  the  Holy  Office  had  laid  hands  on 
her  less  because  she  was  a  witch  than  because 
of  her  great  riches — and  it  was  told  that  when 
she  had  been  seized  ten  barrels  filled  with  gold- 
dust  had  been  seized  with  her.  So  talk  about 
the  matter  was  on  every  tongue. 

Many  years  went  by,  Senor,  and  all  of  that 
talk  was  almost  forgotten.  Then,  on  a  morn- 
ing, the  city  was  astonished  by  hearing — no 
one  knew  from  where — that  at  the  next  auto 
de  fe  the  witch  of  Cordoba  would  walk  with 
the  unredeemed  ones,  carrying  the  flameless 

[17] 


LEGENDS     OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

green  candle  and  wearing  the  high  bonnet,  and 
would  be  burned  at  the  burning-place  of  the 
Holy  Office — it  was  in  front  of  the  church  of  San 
Diego,  Senor,  at  the  western  end  of  what  now  is 
the  Alameda — and  so  would  have  burned  out  of 
her  her  sins.  And  before  that  astonishment  was 
ended,  there  came  another  and  a  greater:  when 
it  was  told  that  the  witch,  before  the  very  eyes 
of  her  jailers,  had  escaped  from  the  prison  of 
the  Inquisition  and  was  gone  free !  All  sorts  of 
stories  flew  about  the  city.  One  said,  crossing 
himself,  that  her  friend  the  devil  had  helped 
her  to  her  freedom ;  another  said  that  Inquisitors 
also  were  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  that  she  had 
been  freed  by  her  own  beauty.  Men  talked 
at  random — because,  neither  then  nor  later, 
did  anybody  know  what  really  had  happened. 
But  what  really  did  happen,  Senor,  was 
this: 

On  a  day,  the  chief  Inquisitor  went  into  the 
prison  of  the  Mulata  that  he  might  reason  her 
to  repentance.  And,  being  come  into  her 
prison-Mt  was  a  long  and  lofty  chamber  that 
they  had  put  her  into,  Senor,  not  one  of  the 
bad  small  cellsV-he  stopped  short  in  amaze- 
ment: beholding  before  him,  drawn  with  char- 

[18] 


THE    MULATA    DE    CORDOBA 

coal  on  the  wall  of  the  chamber,  a  great  ship 
that  lacked  not  a  single  rope  nor  a  single  sail 
nor  anything  whatever  that  a  ship  requires! 
While  he  stood  gazing  at  that  ship,  wondering, 
the  Mulata  turned  to  him  and  looked  strangely 
at  him  out  of  her  wicked  black  eyes,  and  said 
in  a  tone  of  railing:  "Holy  Father,  what  does 
this  ship  need  to  make  it  perfect?"  And  to 
that  he  answered:  "Unhappy  woman!  It  is 
thou  who  needest  much  to  make  thee  perfect, 
that  thou  mayest  be  cleansed  of  thy  sins!  As 
for  this  ship,  it  is  in  all  other  ways  so  wholly 
perfect  that  it  needs  only  to  sail."  Then  said 
the  Mulata:  "That  it  shall  do — and  very  far!" 
and  there  was  on  her  face  as  she  spoke  to  him 
a  most  wicked  smile.  With  astonishment  he 
looked  at  her,  and  at  the  ship.  "How  can 
that  be  possible !' '  he  asked.  "  In  this  manner !' ' 
she  answered — and,  as  she  spoke,  she  leaped 
lightly  from  the  floor  of  the  prison  to  the  deck 
of  the  ship,  up  there  on  the  wall,  and  stood 
with  her  hand  upon  the  tiller  at  the  ship's 
stern. 

Then  happened,  Senor,  a  very  wonderful 
marvel!  Suddenly  the  sails  of  the  ship  filled 
and  bellied  out  as  though  a  strong  wind  were 

[19] 


LEGENDS     OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

blowing;  and  then,  before  the  eyes  of  the  In- 
quisitor, the  ship  went  sailing  away  along  the 
wall  of  the  chamber — the  Mulata  laughing 
wickedly  as  she  swung  the  tiller  and  steered  it 
upon  its  course!  Slowly  it  went  at  first, 
and  then  more  and  more  rapidly,  until,  being 
come  to  the  wall  at  the  end  of  the  chamber, 
it  sailed  right  on  into  and  through  the  solid 
stone  and  mortar — the  Mulata  still  laughing 
wickedly  as  she  stood  there  steering  at  the 
ship's  stern!  And  then  the  wall  closed  whole 
and  solid  again  behind  the  ship,  and  only  a 
little  echoing  sound  of  that  wicked  laughter 
was  heard  in  the  chamber — and  the  ship  had 
vanished,  and  the  Mulata  was  out  of  her  prison 
and  gone! 

The  Inquisitor,  Senor,  who  had  seen  this 
devil's  miracle,  immediately  lost  all  his  senses 
and  became  a  madman  and  was  put  into  a  mad- 
house: where,  till  death  gave  peace  to  him,  he 
raved  always  of  a  beautiful  woman  in  a  great 
ship  that  sailed  through  stone  walls  and  across 
the  solid  land.  As  for  the  Mulata,  nothing 
more  ever  was  heard  of  her.  But  it  was  gen- 
erally known  that  her  master  the  devil  had 
claimed  her  for  his  own. 

[20] 


THE    MULATA    DE    CORDOBA 


This  story  is  entirely  true,  Senor — as  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  the  Inquisition  build- 
ing, in  which  all  these  wonders  happened,  still 
is  standing.  It  is  the  Escuela  de  Medicina, 
now. 


LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLEJON   DEL  MUERTO 

IT  is  an  unwise  thing,  Senor,  and  there  also 
is  wickedness  in  it,  to  make  a  vow  to  the 
Blessed  Virgin — or,  for  that  matter,  to  the 
smallest  saint  in  the  whole  calendar — and  not 
to  fulfil  that  vow  when  the  Blessed  Virgin,  or 
the  saint,  as  the  case  may  be,  has  performed 
punctually  all  that  the  vow  was  made  for:  and 
so  this  gentleman  of  whom  I  now  am  speaking 
found  out  for  himself,  and  most  uncomfort- 
ably, when  he  died  with  an  unfulfilled  vow  on 
his  shoulders — and  had  to  take  some  of  the 
time  that  he  otherwise  would  have  spent 
pleasantly  in  heaven  among  the  angels  in  order 
to  do  after  he  was  dead  what  he  had  promised 
to  do,  and  what  he  most  certainly  ought  to 
have  done,  while  he  still  was  alive. 

The  name  of  this  gentleman  who  so  badly 
neglected  his  duty,  Senor,  was  Don  Tristan  de 
Alculer;  and  he  was  a  humble  but  honorable 
Spanish  merchant  who  came  from  the  Fili- 

[22] 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    MUERTO 

pinas  to  live  here  in  the  City  of  Mexico;  and 
he  came  in  the  time  when  the  Viceroy  was  the 
Marques  de  Villa  Manrique,  and  most  likely  as 
the  result  of  that  Viceroy's  doings  and  order- 
ings:  because  the  Marques  de  Villa  Manrique 
gave  great  attention  to  enlarging  the  trade 
with  the  East  through  the  Filipinas — as  was 
found  out  by  the  English  corsairs,  so  that  Don 
Francisco  Draco,  who  was  the  greatest  pirate 
of  all  of  them,  was  able  to  capture  a  galleon 
laden  almost  to  sinking  with  nothing  but  silver 
and  gold. 

With  Don  Tristan,  who  was  of  an  elderliness, 
came  his  son  to  help  him  in  his  merchanting; 
and  this  son  was  named  Tristan  also,  and  was  a 
most  worthy  young  gentleman,  very  capable  in 
the  management  of  mercantile  affairs.  Having 
in  their  purses  but  a  light  lining,  their  com- 
merce at  its  beginning  was  of  a  smallness;  and 
they  took  for  their  home  a  mean  house  in  a 
little  street  so  poor  and  so  deserted  that  nobody 
had  taken  the  trouble  to  give  a  name  to  it: 
the  very  street  that  ever  since  their  time  has 
been  called  the  Alley  of  the  Dead  Man — be- 
cause of  what  happened  as  the  result  of  Don 
Tristan's  unfulfilled  vow.  That  they  were 

[23] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

most  respectable  people  is  made  clear  by  the 
fact  that  the  Archbishop  himself — who  at  that 
period  was  the  illustrious  Don  Fray  Garcia  de 
Santa  Maria  Mendoza — was  the  friend  of  them ; 
and  especially  the  friend  of  Don  Tristan  the 
elder,  who  frequently  consulted  with  him  in 
regard  to  the  state  of  his  soul. 

So  a  number  of  prospering  years  passed  on, 
Sefior,  and  then,  on  a  time,  Don  Tristan  the 
son  went  down  to  the  coast  to  make  some  buy- 
ings  :  and  it  was  in  the  bad  season,  and  the  fever 
seized  him  so  fiercely  that  all  in  a  moment  the 
feet  and  half  the  legs  of  him  fairly  were  inside 
of  death's  door.  Then  it  was  that  Don 
Tristan,  being  in  sore  trouble  because  of  his 
son's  desperate  illness,  made  the  vow  that  I 
am  telling  you  about.  He  made  it  to  the 
Blessed  Virgin  of  Guadalupe;  and  he  vowed  to 
her  that  if  she  would  save  his  son  alive  to  him 
from  the  fever  he  would  walk  on  his  bare  feet 
from  his  own  house  to  her  Sanctuary,  and  that 
there  in  her  Sanctuary  he  would  make  his 
thanks  to  her  from  the  deep  depths  of  his  soul. 
And  the  Blessed  Virgin,  being  full  of  love  and 
of  amiability,  was  pleased  to  listen  to  the  prayer 
of  Don  Tristan,  and  to  believe  the  vow  that 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    MUERTO 

went  along  with  it:  wherefore  she  caused  the 
fever  immediately  to  leave  the  sick  Don 
Tristan — and  presently  home  he  came  to  his 
father  alive  and  well. 

But  Don  Tristan,  having  got  from  the  Blessed 
Virgin  all  that  he  had  asked  of  her,  did  not  give 
to  her  what  he  had  promised  to  give  to  her  in 
return.  Being  by  that  time  an  aged  gentleman, 
and  also  being  much  afflicted  with  rheuma- 
tism, the  thought  of  taking  a  walk  of  near  to 
three  miles  barefoot  was  most  distasteful  to 
him.  And  so  he  put  his  walk  off  for  a  week  or 
two — saying  to  himself  that  the  Blessed  Virgin 
would  not  be  in  any  hurry  about  the  matter; 
and  then  he  put  it  off  for  another  week  or  two ; 
and  in  that  way — because  each  time  that  he 
was  for  keeping  his  vow  shivers  would  come  in 
his  old  feet  at  dread  of  being  bare  and  having 
cold  earth  under  them,  and  trembles  would 
come  in  his  old  thin  legs  at  dread  of  more 
rheumatism — the  time  slipped  on  and  on,  and 
the  Blessed  Virgin  did  not  get  her  due. 

But  his  soul  was  not  easy  inside  of  him, 
Senor — and  it  could  not  be,  because  he  was 
playing  fast  and  loose  with  it — and  so  he  laid 
the  whole  matter  before  his  friend  the  Arch- 

[25] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

bishop:  hoping  that  for  friendship's  sake  the 
Archbishop  would  be  so  obliging  as  to  dispense 
him  from  his  vow.  For  myself,  Sefior,  I  can- 
not but  think  that  the  Archbishop — for  all 
that  his  position  put  him  in  close  touch  with 
heavenly  matters,  and  gave  him  the  right  to 
deal  with  them — was  not  well  advised  in  his 
action.  At  any  rate,  what  he  did  was  to  tran- 
quillize Don  Tristan  by  telling  him  that  the 
Blessed  Virgin  was  too  considerate  to  hold  him 
to  a  contract  that  certainly  would  lay  him  up 
with  a  bad  attack  of  rheumatism;  and  that 
even — so  wearied  out  would  he  be  by  forcing 
his  old  thin  legs  to  carry  him  all  that  distance- 
might  be  the  death  of  him.  And  so  the  upshot 
of  it  was  that  the  Archbishop,  being  an  easy- 
going and  a  very  good-natured  gentleman, 
dispensed  Don  Tristan  from  his  vow. 

But  a  vow,  Sefior,  is  a  vow — and  even  an 
Archbishop  cannot  cast  one  loose  from  it;  and 
so  they  all  found  out  on  this  occasion,  and  in  a 
hurry — because  the  Blessed  Virgin,  while  never 
huffed  over  trifles,  does  not  let  the  grass  grow 
under  her  feet  when  her  anger  justly  is  aroused. 

Only  three  days  after  Don  Tristan  had  re- 
ceived his  dispensation — to  which,  as  the  event 

[26] 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    MUERTO 

proved,  he  was  not  entitled — the  Archbishop 
went  on  the  twelfth  of  the  month,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  custom  observed  in  that  matter, 
to  celebrate  mass  at  the  Villa  de  Guadalupe  in 
Our  Lady's  Sanctuary.  The  mass  being  ended, 
he  came  homeward  on  his  mule  by  the  cause- 
way to  the  City;  and  as  he  rode  along  easily  he 
was  put  into  a  great  surprise  by  seeing  Don 
Tristan  walking  toward  him,  and  by  perceiving 
that  he  was  of  a  most  dismal  dead  paleness  and 
that  his  feet  were  bare.  For  a  moment  Don 
Tristan  paused  beside  the  Archbishop — whose 
mule  had  stopped  short,  all  in  a  tremble — and 
clasped  his  hand  with  a  hand  that  was  of  an 
icy  coldness;  then  he  passed  onward — saying 
in  a  dismal  voice,  rusty  and  cavernous,  that 
for  his  soul's  saving  he  was  fulfilling  the  vow 
that  he  had  made  to  her  Ladyship :  because  the 
knowledge  had  come  to  him  that  if  this  vow 
were  not  accomplished  he  certainly  would  spend 
the  whole  of  Eternity  blistering  in  hell !  Hav- 
ing thus  explained  matters,  not  a  word  more 
did  Don  Tristan  have  to  say  for  himself;  nor 
did  he  even  look  backward,  as  he  walked  away 
slowly  and  painfully  on  his  bare  old  feet  toward 
Our  Lady's  shrine. 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

The  Archbishop  trembled  as  much  as  his 
mule  did,  Senor,  being  sure  that  strange  and 
terrible  things  were  about  him;  and  when  the 
mule  a  little  came  out  of  her  fright  and  could 
march  again,  but  still  trembling,  he  went 
straight  to  Don  Tristan's  house  to  find  out— 
though  in  his  heart  he  knew  what  his  finding 
would  be — the  full  meaning  of  this  awesome 
prodigy.  And  he  found  at  Don  Tristan's 
house  what  he  knew  in  his  heart  he  would  find 
there:  and  that  was  Don  Tristan,  the  four  light- 
ed death-candles  around  him,  lying  on  his  bed 
death -struck  —  his  death -white  cold  hands 
clasped  on  his  breast  on  the  black  pall  covering 
him,  and  on  his  death-white  face  the  very  look 
that  was  on  it  as  he  went  to  the  keeping  of  his 
unkept  vow!  Therefore  the  Archbishop  was 
seized  with  a  hot  and  a  cold  shuddering,  and 
his  teeth  rattled  in  the  head  of  him;  and 
straightway  he  and  all  who  were  with  him — 
perceiving  that  they  were  in  the  presence  of  a 
divine  mystery — fell  to  their  knees  in  wonder- 
ing awe  of  what  had  happened,  and  together 
prayed  for  the  peace  of  Don  Tristan's  soul. 

Very  possibly,   Senor,  the  Archbishop  and 

the  rest  of  them  did  not  pray  hard  enough;  or, 

[•*] 


THE    CALLEJQN    DEL    MUERTO 

perhaps,  Don  Tristan's  sin  of  neglect  was  so 
serious  a  matter  that  a  long  spell  in  Purgatory 
was  required  of  him  before  he  could  be  suffered 
to  pass  on  to  a  more  comfortable  region  and 
be  at  ease.  At  any  rate,  almost  immediately 
he  took  to  walking  at  midnight  in  the  little 
street  that  for  so  long  he  had  lived  in — always 
wrapped  in  a  long  white  shroud  that  fluttered 
about  him  in  the  night  wind  loosely,  and 
carrying  always  a  yellow-blazing  great  candle; 
and  so  being  a  most  terrifying  personage  to 
encounter  as  he  marched  slowly  up  and  down. 
Therefore  everybody  who  dwelt  in  that  street 
hurried  to  move  away  from  it,  and  Don  Tristan 
had  it  quite  to  himself  in  its  desertedness — for 
which  reason,  as  I  have  mentioned,  the  Alley 
of  the  Dead  Man  became  its  name. 

I  have  been  told  by  my  friend  the  cargador, 
Senor,  and  also  by  several  other  trustworthy 
persons,  that  Don  Tristan — though  more  than 
three  hundred  years  have  passed  since  the  death 
of  him — has  not  entirely  given  up  his  march- 
ings. Certainly,  for  myself,  I  do  not  think 
that  it  would  be  judicious  to  walk  in  the 
Callejon  del  Muerto  at  midnight  even  now. 

[29] 


LEGEND  OF  THE  ALTAR  DEL  PERDON' 

THIS  painter,  Senor,  who  by  a  miracle 
painted  the  most  beautiful  picture  of  Our 
Lady  of  Mercy  that  is  to  be  found  in  the  whole 
world — the  very  picture  that  ever  since  has 
adorned  the  Altar  del  Perdon  in  the  Cathedral 
— in  the  beginning  of  him  was  a  very  bad 
sinner:  being  a  Fleming,  and  a  Jew,  and  many 
other  things  that  he  ought  not  to  have  been, 
and  therefore  straight  in  the  way  to  pass  the 
whole  of  Eternity — his  wickednesses  being  so 
numerous  that  time  would  have  been  wasted 
in  trying  to  purge  him  of  them  in  Purgatory— 
in  the  hottest  torments  that  the  devil  his 
master  could  contrive.  He  was  a  very  agree- 
able young  gentleman,  of  a  cheerful  and  oblig- 
ing nature,  and  both  witty  and  interesting  in 
his  talkings — for  which  reason  the  Viceroy 
had  a  great  liking  for  his  company  and  had 
him  often  at  the  Palace  to  the  banquets  and 

1  See  Note  II. 
[30] 


THE    ALTAR    DEL    PERDON 

the  festivals  of  the  court.  His  name,  Senor, 
was  Don  Simon  Peyrens;  and  the  Viceroy  his 
patron — in  whose  suite  he  had  come  from 
Spain  expressly  to  beautify  the  Palace  with  his 
paintings — was  Don  Gaston  de  Peralta,  Mar- 
ques de  Falces:  who  was  the  third  Viceroy  of 
the  Province,  being  the  successor  to  the  good 
Don  Luis  de  Velasco  when  that  most  worthy 
gentleman  ceased  to  be  a  Viceroy  and  became 
an  angel  in  the  year  1564. 

Well,  Senor,  it  happened  some  years  later — in 
the  time  of  Don  Martin  Enriquez  de  Almanza, 
the  fourth  Viceroy,  with  whom  Peyrens  re- 
mained in  favor — that  the  Chapter  of  the 
Cathedral,  desiring  to  make  splendid  the  Altar 
del  Perdon,  offered  in  competition  to  all  the 
painters  of  Mexico  a  prize  for  the  most  beau- 
tiful picture  of  Our  Lady  of  Mercy:  which 
picture  was  to  be  placed  in  the  centre  of  that 
altar  and  to  be  the  chief  glory  of  it.  And, 
thereupon,  all  the  painters  of  Mexico,  save 
only  Peyrens,  entered  into  that  competition 
with  a  reverent  and  an  eager  joy.  And  then 
it  was,  Senor,  that  Peyrens  made  plain  the 
wickedness  that  was  in  him  by  his  irreverent 
blasphemies.  At  a  banquet  at  the  Palace  a 

[31] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

very  noble  gentleman  asked  him  why  he  alone 
of  all  the  painters  of  Mexico — and  he  the  best 
of  all  of  them — had  not  entered  into  the 
competition;  to  which  that  sinful  young  man 
answered  with  a  disdainful  and  impious  light- 
ness that  the  painting  of  what  were  called 
sacred  pictures  was  but  foolishness  and  vanity, 
and  that  he  for  his  part  could  not  be  tempted 
to  paint  one  by  all  the  gold  in  the  world ! 

Talk  of  that  sort,  Sefior,  as  you  well  may 
imagine,  scalded  the  ears  of  all  who  heard  it— 
and  in  the  quarter  where  the  punishment  of 
such  sinning  was  attended  to  it  made  an  instant 
stir.  In  a  moment  information  of  that  evil 
young  man's  utterances  was  carried  to  the 
Archbishop — who  at  that  time  was  the  vener- 
able Fray  Alonzo  de  Montufar — and  in  another 
moment  he  found  himself  lodged  behind  iron 
bars  in  a  cell  in  the  Inquisition:  that  blessed 
const rainer  to  righteousness,  for  the  comforting 
of  the  faithful,  that  then  was  proving  its  use- 
fulness by  mowing  down  the  weeds  of  heresy 
with  a  very  lively  zeal. 

Being  of  an  incredible  hard-heartedness, 
neither  the  threats  nor  the  pleadings  of  the 
Familiars  of  the  Holy  Office  could  stir  Peyrens 

[3*] 


THE    ALTAR    DEL    PERDON 

from  the  stand  that  he  had  taken.  Resolutely 
he  refused  to  recant  his  blasphemies;  equally 
resolutely  he  refused  to  accept  his  freedom  on 
the  condition  that  he  should  paint  the  picture 
of  Our  Lady — and  he  even  went  so  far,  when 
they  brought  him  the  materials  for  the  making 
of  that  picture,  as  to  tear  the  canvas  to  shreds 
and  rags! 

And  so  the  days  ran  on  into  weeks,  and  the 
weeks  into  months,  and  nothing  changed  in  that 
bad  matter:  save  that  the  Archbishop,  saintly 
man  that  he  was,  began  to  lose  his  temper;  and 
that  the  Familiars  of  the  Holy  Office  lost  their 
tempers  entirely — and  were  for  settling  ac- 
counts with  Peyrens  by  burning  his  wicked- 
ness out  of  him  with  heavenly  fire. 

As  it  happened,  Senor,  a  great  opportunity 
for  such  wholesome  purifying  of  him  was  im- 
minent: because  at  that  time  the  preparations 
were  being  made  for  the  very  first  auto  de  fe 
that  ever  was  celebrated  in  Mexico,  and  all  the 
City  was  on  tiptoe  of  joyful  expectation  of  it. 
Therefore  everybody  was  looking  forward  with 
a  most  pleased  interest  to  seeing  that  criminally 
stiff-necked  painter — properly  clad  in  a  yellow 
coat  with  a  red  cross  on  the  back  and  on  the 

[33] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

front  of  it — walking  with  the  condemned  ones; 
and  then,  on  the  brasero  that  had  been  set  up 
in  the  market-place,  to  seeing  him  and  his  sins 
together  burned  to  ashes;  and  then  to  seeing 
those  sin-tainted  ashes  carried  to  the  outskirts 
of  the  City  and  scattered  pollutingly  on  the 
muddy  marsh. 

However,  Senor,  none  of  those  interesting 
and  edifying  things  happened:  because  Our 
Lady  of  Mercy — and  it  was  just  like  the  good- 
nature of  her  to  do  so — took  a  hand  in  the 
affair,  and  by  the  working  of  a  loving  miracle 
made  everything  come  out  smoothly  and  well. 

On  a  night,  as  he  lay  sleeping  on  his  pallet 
in  his  cell  in  the  Inquisition,  Peyrens  was 
awakened  suddenly  he  knew  not  how;  and  as 
he  wakened  he  found  in  his  nose  a  smell  so 
delectable  that  he  thought  that  he  still  was 
asleep  and  his  nose  dreaming  it:  and  for  him 
to  have  that  thought  was  quite  reasonable, 
Senor,  because  it  was  the  pure  fragrance  of 
heaven — to  which,  of  course,  human  noses  are 
unaccustomed — that  filled  the  room.  Then, 
as  he  lay  on  his  pallet  wondering,  a  shimmering 
light  began  to  glow  softly  in  the  darkness; 
and  the  light  constantly  grew  stronger  and 

[34] 


THE    ALTAR    DEL    PERDON 

stronger  until  it  became  a  glorious  radiance  far 
brighter  than  any  sunlight;  and  then  in  the 
midst  of  that  resplendency — yet  the  heavenly 
sparkle  of  her  making  the  dazzle  of  it  seem  like 
darkness — Our  Lady  of  Mercy  herself  appeared 
to  him:  and  he  would  have  died  of  the  glory 
of  her,  had  it  not  been  for  the  loving  kindness 
that  shone  upon  him  assuringly  and  com- 
fortingly from  her  gentle  eyes. 

Then  said  to  him  Our  Lady,  in  a  voice 
sweeter  than  any  earthly  music:  " Little  son, 
why  dost  thou  not  love  me?"  And  Peyrens — 
his  hard  heart  melted  by  that  gentle  look  and 
by  that  sweet  voice,  and  all  of  his  wickedness 
cured  by  that  loving  kindness — rose  from  his 
pallet  and  knelt  before  Our  Lady,  saying  with 
a  deep  earnestness:  "Queen  of  Heaven,  I 
reverence  and  I  love  thee  with  all  the  heart  of 
me  and  with  all  my  soul!"  Then,  for  a  time, 
a  serene  strange  happiness  bemazed  him  dream- 
fully — and  when  his  bemazement  left  him  the 
resplendent  presence  was  gone.  But  with  him 
still  remained  the  heavenly  radiance  that  was 
brighter  than  any  sunlight,  and  the  heavenly 
perfume  that  was  sweeter  than  spikenard  and 
lilies ;  and  while  he  pondered  all  these  mysteries, 

[35] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

awe- bound  and  wondering,  again  sounded  in  his 
ears  that  heaven-sweet  voice — coming  as  from 
a  great  distance,  but  with  a  bell-note  clearness 
—saying  to  him  gently  and  lovingly:  "Paint 
now  thy  picture  of  me,  little  son!" 

Quite  possibly,  Senor,  in  the  hurry  of  the 
moment,  Our  Lady  forgot  that  Peyrens  had  no 
canvas — because  in  his  sinful  anger  he  had 
destroyed  it — on  which  to  paint  the  picture 
that  she  commanded  of  him;  but,  for  myself, 
I  think  that  she  meant  to  set  his  wits  to  work 
to  find  the  means  by  which  he  could  obey  her 
command.  At  any  rate,  his  wits  did  work  so 
well  that  even  as  she  spoke  he  saw  his  way  out 
of  his  difficulty;  and  in  an  instant — all  a-thrill 
with  joyful  eagerness  to  do  Our  Lady's  bidding, 
and  inspired  by  the  splendor  of  his  vision  of 
her — he  set  himself  to  painting  the  portrait  of 
her,  just  as  his  own  eyes  had  seen  her  in  her 
glory,  on  the  oaken  door  of  his  cell. 

All  the  night  long,  Senor — working  by  the 
heaven-light  that  was  brighter  than  any  sun- 
light, and  having  in  his  happy  nose  the  heaven 
fragrance  that  uplifted  his  soul  with  the  sweet- 
ness of  it — he  painted  as  one  who  painted  in  a 
heaven-sent  dream.  And  when  the  morning 

[36] 


THE    ALTAR    DEL    PERDON 

came,  and  the  glimmering  daylight  took  dimly 
the  place  of  the  heaven-light,  he  had  finished 
there  on  the  door  of  his  cell  the  most  beautiful 
picture  of  Our  Lady — as  I  said  in  the  beginning 
—that  ever  has  been  painted  in  this  mortal 
world:  and  so  it  had  to  be — because,  you  see, 
it  is  the  only  picture  of  her  that  ever  has  been 
painted  of  her  by  one  who  has  beheld  her  with 
mortal  eyes! 

As  usually  is  the  case  with  miracles,  Senor, 
the  outcome  of  this  one  was  most  satisfactory. 
The  Archbishop  and  the  Chapter  of  the 
Cathedral,  being  brought  in  haste,  instantly 
felt  themselves  compelled  to  adore  that  mirac- 
ulous image;  and  when  they  had  finished 
adoring  it  they  equally  felt  themselves  com- 
pelled to  declare  that  Peyrens  by  his  making 
of  it  had  earned  both  his  freedom  and  the 
prize.  Therefore  Peyrens  was  set  at  liberty 
and  most  richly  rewarded;  and  the  pictured 
door  was  taken  from  its  hinges  and,  being 
framed  in  a  great  frame  of  silver,  was  set  upon 
the  Altar  del  Perdon  to  be  the  chief  glory  of 
it;  and  what  was  best  of  all — because  it  made 
safe  the  soul  of  him  for  all  Eternity — the 
Archbishop  formally  confirmed  to  Peyrens  his 

[37] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

absolution,  through  Our  Lady's  loving  kind- 
ness, from  his  bad  heresy  and  from  all  his 
other  sins. 

What  became  of  this  Peyrens  later,  Senor, 
I  have  not  heard  mentioned;  but  in  regard  to 
the  accuracy  of  all  that  I  have  told  you  about 
him  there  can  be  no  question:  because  the 
miracle-picture  that  he  painted  still  adorns  the 
Altar  del  Perdon,  and  is  the  chief  glory  of  it 
— and  there  you  may  see  it  this  very  day. 


LEGEND  OF  THE   CALLEJON   DEL  ARMADO 

THIS  Alleyway  of  the  Armed  One,  Senor, 
got  its  name  because  long  ago — before  it 
had  any  name  at  all — there  lived  in  it  an  old 
man  who  went  always  clad  in  armor,  wearing 
also  his  sword  and  his  dagger  at  his  side;  and 
all  that  was  known  about  him  was  that  his 
name  was  Don  Lope  de  Armijo  y  Lara,  and 
that — for  all  that  he  lived  so  meanly  in  so 
mean  a  street  in  so  mean  a  quarter  of  the  City 
—he  was  a  rich  merchant,  and  that  he  came 
from  Spain. 

Into  his  poor  little  house  no  one  ever  got  so 
much  as  the  tip  of  his  nose,  and  he  lived  alone 
there  in  great  mystery.  In  spite  of  his  riches, 
he  had  not  even  one  servant;  and  he  himself 
bought  his  own  victuals  and  cooked  them  with 
his  own  hands.  Always  he  was  seen  armed 
to  the  teeth  [armado  hasta  los  dientes]  when  he 
went  abroad.  Under  his  mean  robe  was  a  full 
suit  of  armor,  and  in  his  belt  was  a  long  dagger 

[39] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

and  a  broad  and  very  long  sword;  also,  when 
at  night  he  went  out  on  strange  errands,  he 
carried  a  great  pike.  Therefore,  presently, 
people  spoke  of  him  not  as  Don  Lope  but  as 
El  Armado — and  so  he  was  called. 

That  he  was  a  wicked  person  was  known 
generally.  He  was  very  charitable  to  the 
poor.  Every  morning  he  went  to  pray  in  the 
church  of  San  Francisco;  and  he  remained 
praying  there  for  hours  at  a  time,  kneeling 
upon  his  knees.  Also,  at  the  proper  seasons, 
he  partook  of  the  Sacrament.  Some  said  that 
through  the  shut  windows  of  his  house,  in 
the  night-time,  they  had  heard  the  sound  of 
his  scourgings  as  he  made  penance  for  his 
sins. 

In  the  darkness  of  the  darkest  of  nights— 
when  there  was  no  moon,  and  especially  when 
a  dismal  drizzling  rain  was  falling — he  would 
be  seen  to  come  out  from  his  house  in  all  his 
armor  and  go  stealing  away  in  the  direction  of 
the  Plazuela  de  Mixcalco.  He  would  disap- 
pear into  the  shadows,  and  not  come  back 
again  until  midnight  had  passed.  Then  he 
would  be  heard,  in  his  shut  house,  counting 
his  money.  For  a  long  while  that  would  go 

[40] 


f  <" 


•D 


Vteni'  af^tT 


<&  >' 


EL  CALLEJON  DEL    ARMADO 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    ARMADO 

on — counting,  counting,  counting — there  was 
no  end  to  the  clinking  of  silver  coin.  Then, 
when  all  his  money  was  counted,  would  be 
heard  the  sound  of  scourging,  together  with 
most  lamentable  and  complaining  groanings. 
And,  at  the  end  of  all,  would  come  a  heavy 
clanking — as  of  a  great  iron  cover  falling 
heavily  upon  a  chest  of  iron.  After  that  there 
would  be  no  sign  of  life  about  the  house  until 
the  morning — when  the  Armed  One  would 
come  forth  from  it  and  go  to  San  Francisco  to 
pray. 

The  life  of  that  man  was  a  bad  mystery, 
Senor,  that  many  wished  to  uncover  by  de- 
nouncing him  to  justice;  but  the  uncovering 
came  of  its  own  accord,  and  was  a  greater 
mystery  still!  On  a  morning,  all  the  neigh- 
bors saw  the  Armed  One  hanging  dead — hang- 
ing dead  from  his  own  balcony  by  a  cord! 
No  one  knew  what  to  think;  but  most  thought 
that  he  had  hung  himself  there  in  fear  that 
denouncement  of  his  crimes  would  be  made 
and  that  justice  would  have  its  hold  upon  him. 
When  the  Alcalde  came,  and  made  search  in 
his  house,  a  very  great  sum  of  money  was 
found;  and,  also,  were  found  many  skulls  of 

[41] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF     MEX1C 

men  who  certainly  must  have  perished  at  his 
hands. 

It  is  a  most  curious  matter,  Senor.  I  can- 
not see  my  way  through  it.  But  the  house  is 
gone. 


LEGEND   OFTHE   ADUANA   DE    SANTO 
DOMINGO1 

THIS  gentleman  who  for  love's  sake,  Sefior, 
conquered  his  coldness  and  his  laziness 
and  became  all  fire  and  energy,  was  named 
Don  Juan  Gutierrez  Rubin  de  Celis.  He  was 
a  caballero  of  the  Order  of  Santiago — some 
say  that  he  wore  also  the  habit  of  Calatrava— 
and  the  colonel  of  the  regiment  of  the  Tres 
Villas.  He  was  of  a  lovable  nature,  and 
ostentatious  and  arrogant,  and  in  all  his  ways 
dilatory  and  apathetic  to  the  very  last  degree. 
So  great  were  his  riches  that  not  even  he  him- 
self knew  the  sum  of  them:  as  you  will  under- 
stand when  I  tell  you  that  on  an  occasion  of 
state — it  was  the  entry  into  the  City  in  the  year 
1 7 1 6  of  the  new  Viceroy,  the  Marques  de  Valero 
—pearls  to  the  value  of  thirty  thousand  pesos 
were  used  in  the  mere  trimming  of  his  casacdn. 
Being  of  an  age  to  take  part  so  nobly  in  that 

1  See  Note  III. 
*  [43] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

noble  ceremony,  he  must  have  been  a  gentle- 
man well  turned  of  forty,  Senor,  when  the 
matters  whereof  I  now  am  telling  you  occurred : 
of  which  the  beginning — and  also  the  middle 
and  the  ending,  because  everything  hinged 
upon  it — was  his  falling  most  furiously  in  love 
with  a  very  beautiful  young  lady;  and  his 
falling  in  love  in  that  furious  fashion  was  the 
very  first  sign  of  energy  that  in  all  his  lifetime, 
until  that  moment,  he  had  shown.  The  name 
of  this  beautiful  young  lady  with  whom  he 
fell  in  love  so  furiously  was  Dona  Sara  de 
Garcia  Somera  y  Acufia;  and  she  was  less 
than  half  as  old  as  he  was,  but  possessed  of  a 
very  sensible  nature  that  made  her  do  more 
thinking  than  is  done  usually  by  young  ladies; 
and  she  was  of  a  noble  house,  and  a  blood 
relative  of  the  Viceroy's:  for  which  reason  the 
Viceroy — who  by  that  time  was  Don  Juan  de 
Acuna,  Marque's  de  Casafuerte — was  much 
interested  in  the  whole  affair. 

The  love-making  of  this  so  notoriously  lazy 
gentleman  did  not  at  all  go  upon  wheels, 
Senor:  because  Dona  Sara  set  herself — as  was 
her  habit  when  dealing  with  any  matter  of 
importance — to  thinking  about  it  very  serious- 

[44] 


THE  ADUANA  DE  SANTO  DOMINGO 

ly;  and  the  more  that  she  thought  about  it  the 
more  she  made  her  mind  up  that  so  dull  and 
so  apathetic  a  gentleman — who,  moreover, 
was  old  enough  to  be  her  father — would  not  in 
the  least  be  the  sort  of  husband  that  she 
desired.  But  also,  because  of  her  good  sense, 
she  perceived  that  much  was  to  be  said  in  favor 
of  entering  into  wedlock  with  him:  because  his 
rank  and  his  great  wealth  made  him  one  of  the 
most  important  personages  in  the  Vice-King- 
dom; and,  moreover,  for  all  that  he  was  old 
enough  to  be  her  father,  he  still  was  a  very 
personable  man.  And  so  she  thought  very 
hard  in  both  directions,  and  could  not  in  either 
direction  make  up  her  mind. 

While  matters  were  in  this  condition,  Senor 
—Don  Juan  furiously  in  love  with  Dona  Sara, 
and  Dona  Sara  thinking  in  that  sensible  way 
of  hers  about  being  temperately  in  love  with 
Don  Juan — something  happened  that  gave 
a  new  turn  to  the  whole  affair.  This  thing 
that  happened  was  that  the  Viceroy — who  was 
a  great  friend  of  Don  Juan's;  and  who,  as  I  have 
mentioned,  was  a  kinsman  of  Dona  Sara's,  and 
much  interested  in  all  that  was  going  forward 
— appointed  Don  Juan  to  be  Prior  of  the  Con- 

[45] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

sulado;  that  is  to  say,  President  of  the  Tribunal 
of  Commerce:  which  was  a  most  honorable 
office,  in  keeping  with  his  rank  and  his  riches; 
and  which  also  was  an  office — because  all  the 
work  of  it  could  be  done  by  deputy,  or  even 
left  undone — that  fitted  in  with  Don  Juan's 
lazy  apathy  to  a  hair. 

Now  at  that  time,  Senor,  the  building  of  the 
Aduana  de  Santo  Domingo  was  in  progress- 
it  ceased  to  be  a  custom-house  many  years  ago, 
Senor;  it  is  occupied  by  the  Secretana  de 
Comunicaciones  now  —  and  it  had  been  in 
progress,  with  no  great  result  from  the  work 
that  laggingly  was  done  on  it,  for  a  number 
of  years.  The  charge  of  the  making  of  this 
edifice  rested  with  the  Consulado;  and,  nat- 
urally, the  new  Prior  of  the  Consulado  was 
even  more  content  than  had  been  his  pred- 
ecessors in  that  office  to  let  the  making  of  it 
lag  on. 

Then  it  was,  Senor,  that  there  came  into  the 
sensible  mind  of  Dona  Sara  a  notable  project 
for  proving  whether  Don  Juan's  lazy  apathy 
went  to  the  very  roots  of  him;  or  whether,  at 
the  very  roots  of  him — over  and  above  the 

energy  that  he  had  shown  in  his  furious  love 

[46] 


THE  ADUANA  DE  SANTO  DOMINGO 

for  her — he  had  energy  that  she  could  arouse 
and  could  set  a-going  in  practically  useful 
ways.  And  her  reasoning  was  this  wise:  that 
if  Don  Juan  could  be  stirred  by  her  urgence  to 
do  useful  work  with  vigor,  then  was  it  likely 
that  her  urgence  would  arouse  him  from  all 
his  apathies — and  so  would  recast  him  into  the 
sort  of  husband  that  she  desired  to  have. 
Therefore  Dona  Sara  told  Don  Juan  that  she 
would  marry  him  only  on  one  condition;  and 
that  her  condition  was  that  he  should  finish 
completely  the  long-drawn-out  building  of  the 
Aduana  within  six  months  from  that  very 
day!  And  Don  Juan,  Senor,  was  so  furiously 
in  love  with  Dona  Sara  that  in  the  same  instant 
that  she  gave  him  her  condition  he  accepted 
it;  and  he — who  never  had  done  a  hand's  turn 
of  work  in  all  his  lifetime — promised  her  that 
he  would  do  the  almost  impossible  piece  of 
work  that  she  had  set  him  to  do:  and  that  the 
Aduana  should  be  finished  completely  within 
six  months  from  that  very  day ! 

And  then  all  the  City  was  amazed — and  so, 
for  that  matter,  Don  Juan  himself  was — by  the 
fire  and  the  force  and  the  breathless  eagerness 
with  which  he  set  himself  to  the  task  that 

[47] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF     MEXICO 

Dona  Sara  had  put  upon  him.  In  a  single 
moment  he  had  gone  to  every  one  of  all  the 
architects  in  the  City  urging  them  to  take  in 
charge  for  him  that  almost  impossible  piece  of 
building;  and  in  the  very  next  moment — every 
one  of  all  the  architects  in  the  City  having  made 
answer  to  him  that  what  he  wanted  of  them 
could  not  even  by  a  miracle  be  accomplished- 
he  himself  took  charge  of  it:  and  with  a 
furiousness  that  matched  precisely — as  Dona 
Sara  perceived  with  hopeful  satisfaction — with 
the  furiousness  of  his  love. 

What  Don  Juan  did  in  that  matter,  Senor, 
was  done  as  though  in  the  insides  of  him  were 
tempests  and  volcanoes!  From  the  Tierra 
Caliente  he  brought  up  as  by  magic  myriads  of 
negro  workmen  to  do  the  digging  and  the  heavy 
carrying;  all  the  quarries  around  the  City  he 
crammed  full  of  stone-cutters;  every  mason 
was  set  to  work  at  wall-laying ;  every  carpenter 
to  making  the  doors  and  the  windows;  every 
brick-yard  to  making  the  tiles  for  the  roof  and 
the  floors;  every  blacksmith  to  making  the 
locks  and  the  hinges  and  the  window-gratings 
and  the  balcony  rails.  And  in  the  midst  of  his 
swarms  of  laborers  Don  Juan  himself  worked 

[48] 


THE  ADUANA  DE  SANTO  DOMINGO 

harder  than  all  of  them  put  together;  and  was 
everywhere  at  once  among  them  urging  them 
to  hurry  and  to  hurry ;  and  to  any  one  of  them 
who  showed  even  the  slightest  sign  of  lagging 
there  came  from  Don  Juan's  mouth  a  berating 
volleying  of  scorpions  and  snakes  and  toads! 

In  very  truth,  Senor,  such  was  Don  Juan's 
raging  energy  that  he  was  as  a  frenzied  person. 
But  it  was  a  frenzy  that  had  no  real  madness 
in  it :  because  everything  that  he  did  and  that 
he  made  to  be  done  was  directed  by  a  most 
sensible  discretion — so  that  not  a  moment  of 
time  nor  the  turn  of  a  hand  was  wasted,  and 
in  every  single  instant  the  building  grew  and 
grew.  And  the  upshot  of  it  all  was  that  he 
accomplished  just  what  he  had  made  his  whole 
soul  up  he  would  accomplish:  within  the  six 
months  that  Dona  Sara  had  given  him  to  do 
his  work  in,  he  did  do  it — and  even  with  a  little 
time  to  spare.  Three  full  days  before  the  last 
of  his  six  months  was  ended  the  Aduana  was 
finished  to  the  very  least  part  of  its  smallest 
detail;  and  Don  Juan  —  all  aglow  over  his 
triumphant  fulfilment  of  Dona  Sara's  almost 
impossible  condition — carried  the  key  of  that 
perfectly  completed  vast  structure  to  the 

[49] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

Palace,  and  there  placed  the  key  of  it  in  the 
Viceroy's  hands! 

Moreover — that  all  the  world  might  know 
why  it  was,  and  for  whom  it  was,  that  his  great 
work  had  been  accomplished — Don  Juan  caused 
to  be  carved  on  a  wall  of  the  building  a  most 
artfully  contrived  inscription :  that  seemed  only 
to  give  soberly  his  own  name,  and  the  names 
of  the  Consules  associated  with  him,  and  the 
date  of  the  Aduana's  completion ;  but  that  was 
so  arranged  that  the  first  letters  of  the  five 
lines  of  it  together  made  the  initials  of  Dona 
Sara's  name. 

Don  Juan  thus  having  done  what  Dona  Sara 
had  set  him  to  do,  and  what  every  one  of  all  the 
architects  in  the  City  had  declared  could  not  be 
done  even  by  a  miracle,  it  was  evident  to  the 
whole  world  that  at  the  very  roots  of  him  was 
more  blazing  energy  than  would  suffice  for  the 
equipment  of  a  half  hundred  of  ordinary  men. 
Wherefore  Dona  Sara  was  well  satisfied — her 
urgence  having  stirred  him  to  do  that  great 
useful  work  with  such  masterful  vigor — that 
her  urgence  equally  would  arouse  him  from  all 
of  his  apathies:  and  so  would  recast  him  into 
the  sort  of  husband  that  she  desired  to  have. 

[50] 


THE  ADUANA  DE  SANTO  DOMINGO 

Therefore  Dona  Sara  immediately  gave  to  Don 
Juan  her  hand  in  marriage:  and  as  the  Aduana 
still  is  standing — and  precisely  where,  faster 
than  a  miracle,  Don  Juan  built  it — the  Senor 
has  only  to  look  at  it,  and  to  read  the  inscrip- 
tion showing  Dona  Sara's  initials,  to  know 
both  the  truth  of  this  curious  story  and  that 
Dona  Sara's  choice  of  a  husband  was  well 
made. 


LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE   DE   LA  QUEMADA 

NOT  knowing  what  they  are  talking  about, 
Senor,  many  people  will  tell  you  that  the 
Street  of  the  Burned  Woman  got  its  name  be- 
cause— in  the  times  when  the  Holy  Office 
was  helping  the  goodness  of  good  people  by 
making  things  very  bad  for  the  bad  ones — a 
woman  heretic  most  properly  and  satisfac- 
torily was  burned  there.  Such  is  not  in  the 
least  the  case.  The  Quemadero  of  the  In- 
quisition— where  such  sinners  were  burned, 
that  their  sins  might  be  burned  out  of  them— 
was  nowhere  near  the  Calle  de  la  Quemada: 
being  at  the  western  end  of  what  now  is  the 
Alameda,  in  quite  a  different  part  of  the  town. 
Therefore  it  is  a  mistake  to  mix  these  matters: 
and  the  real  truth  is  that  this  beautiful  young 
lady  did  herself  destroy  her  own  beauty  by 
setting  fire  to  it;  and  she  did  it  because  she 
wanted  to  do  it — that  in  that  way  she  might 
settle  some  doubts  which  were  in  her  heart. 

[5*1 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    QUEMADA 

It  all  happened  in  the  time  of  the  good  Viceroy 
Don  Luis  de  Velasco :  and  so  you  will  perceive, 
Senor,  that  this  story  is  more  than  three  hun- 
dred years  old. 

The  name  of  this  beautiful  young  lady  who 
went  to  such  lengths  for  her  heart's  assuring 
was  Dona  Beatrice  de  Espinosa;  and  the  name 
of  her  father  was  Don  Gonzalo  de  Espinosa  y 
Guevra — who  was  a  Spanish  rich  merchant 
who  came  to  make  himself  still  richer  by  his 
buyings  and  his  sellings  in  New  Spain.  Being 
arrived  here,  he  took  up  his  abode  in  a  fine 
dwelling  in  the  quarter  of  San  Pablo,  in  the 
very  street  that  now  is  called  the  Street  of  the 
Burned  Woman  because  of  what  presently 
happened  there;  and  if  that  street  was  called 
by  some  other  name  before  that  cruel  happen- 
ing I  do  not  know  what  it  was. 

Dona  Beatrice  was  as  beautiful,  Senor,  as  the 
full  moon  and  the  best  of  the  stars  put  together; 
and  she  was  more  virtuous  than  she  was  beauti- 
ful; and  she  was  just  twenty  years  old.  There- 
fore all  the  young  gentlemen  of  the  City  im- 
mediately fell  in  love  with  her;  and  great 
numbers  of  the  richest  and  the  noblest  of  them— 
their  parents,  or  other  suitable  persons,  making 

[53] 


LEGfcNDS    OF    THH    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

the  request  for  them — asked  her  father's  per- 
mission to  wed  her:  so  that  Dona  Beatrice 
might  have  had  any  one  of  twenty  good  hus- 
bands, had  any  one  of  them  been  to  her  mind. 
However — being  a  lady  very  particular  in  the 
matter  of  husbands — not  one  of  them  was  to 
her  liking:  wherefore  her  father  did  as  she  want- 
ed him  to  do  and  refused  them  all. 

But,  on  a  day,  matters  went  differently. 
At  a  great  ball  given  by  the  Viceroy  in  the 
Palace  Dona  Beatrice  found  what  her  heart 
had  been  waiting  for:  and  this  was  a  noble 
Italian  young  gentleman  who  instantly — as 
all  the  others  had  done — fell  in  love  with  her; 
and  with  whom— as  she  never  before  had  done 
with  anybody — she  instantly  fell  in  love.  The 
name  of  this  young  gentleman  was  Don 
Martin  Scipoli;  and  he  was  the  Marques  de 
Pinamonte  y  Frantescello ;  and  he  was  as 
handsome  as  he  was  lovable,  and  of  a  most 
jealous  nature,  and  as  quarrelsome  as  it  was 
possible  for  anybody  to  be.  Therefore,  as  I 
have  said,  Senor,  Dona  Beatrice  at  once  fell  in 
love  with  him  with  all  the  heart  of  her;  and  Don 
Martin  at  once  fell  in  love  with  her  also:  and 
so  violently  that  his  jealousy  of  all  her  other 

[54] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    QUEMADA 

lovers  set  off  his  quarrelsomeness  at  such  a  rate 
that  he  did  nothing — in  his  spare  time,  when 
he  was  not  making  love  to  Dona  Beatrice — but 
affront  and  anger  them,  so  that  he  might  have 
the  pleasure  of  finding  them  at  the  point  of  his 
sword. 

Now  Dona  Beatrice,  Sefior,  was  a  young 
lady  of  a  most  delicate  nature,  and  her  notions 
about  love  were  precisely  the  same  as  those 
which  are  entertained  by  the  lady  angels. 
Therefore  Don  Martin's  continual  fightings 
very  much  worried  her:  raising  in  her  heart 
the  dread  that  so  violent  a  person  must  be  of 
a  coarse  and  carnal  nature;  and  that,  being 
of  such  a  nature,  his  love  for  her  came  only 
from  his  beblindment  by  the  outside  beauty  of 
her,  and  was  not — as  her  own  love  was — the 
pure  love  of  soul  for  soul.  Moreover,  she  was 
pained  by  his  being  led  on  by  his  jealousy— 
for  which  there  was  no  just  occasion — to  injure 
seriously,  and  even  mortally,  so  many  worthy 
young  men. 

Therefore  Dona  Beatrice — after  much  think- 
ing and  a  great  deal  of  praying  over  the  matter 
—made  her  mind  up  to  destroy  her  own  beauty : 
that  in  that  way  she  might  put  all  jealousies 

[55] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

out  of  the  question ;  and  at  the  same  time  prove 
to  her  heart's  satisfying  that  DonMartin's  love  for 
her  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  outside  beauty  of 
her  and  truly  was  the  pure  love  of  soul  for  soul. 

And  Dona  Beatrice,  Senor,  did  do  that  very 
thing.  Her  father  being  gone  abroad  from 
his  home,  and  all  of  the  servants  of  the  house 
being  on  one  excuse  or  another  sent  out  of  it, 
she  brought  into  her  own  chamber  a  brazier 
rilled  with  burning  coals;  and  this  she  set  be- 
neath an  image  of  the  blessed  Santa  Lucia 
that  she  had  hung  upon  the  wall  to  give  strength 
to  her  in  case,  in  doing  herself  so  cruel  an 
injury,  her  own  strength  should  fail.  Santa 
Lucia,  as  you  will  remember,  Senor,  with  her 
own  hands  plucked  out  her  own  wonderfully 
beautiful  eyes  and  sent  them  on  a  platter  to 
the  young  gentleman  who  had  troubled  her 
devotions  by  telling  her  that  he  could  not  live 
without  them;  and  with  them  sent  the  message 
that,  since  she  had  given  him  the  eyes  that  he 
could  not  live  without,  he  please  would  let  her 
and  her  devotions  alone.  Therefore  it  was  clear 
that  Santa  Lucia  was  the  saint  best  fitted  to  over- 
see the  matter  that  Dona  Beatrice  had  in  hand. 

But  in  regard  to  her  eyes  Dona  Beatrice  did 
[56] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    QUEMADA 

not  precisely  pattern  herself  upon  Santa  Lucia : 
knowing  that  without  them  she  could  not  see 
how  Don  Martin  stood  the  test  that  she  meant 
to  put  him  to ;  and,  also,  very  likely  remember- 
ing that  Santa  Lucia  miraculously  got  her  eyes 
back  again,  and  got  them  back  even  more 
beautiful  than  when  she  lost  them:  because, 
you  see,  they  came  back  rilled  with  the  light 
of  heaven — where  the  angels  had  been  taking 
care  of  them  until  they  should  be  returned. 
Therefore  Dona  Beatrice  bound  a  wet  hand- 
kerchief over  her  eyes — that  she  might  keep 
the  sight  in  them  to  see  how  Don  Martin  stood 
his  testing;  and,  also,  that  she  might  spare  the 
angels  the  inconvenience  of  caring  for  them — 
and  then  she  fanned  and  fanned  the  fire  in  the 
brazier  until  the  purring  of  it  made  her  know 
that  the  coals  were  in  a  fierce  blaze.  And 
then,  Sefior,  she  plunged  her  beautiful  face 
down  into  the  very  heart  of  the  glowing  coals! 
And  it  was  at  that  same  instant — though  Dona 
Beatrice,  of  course,  did  not  know  about  that 
part  of  the  matter — that  the  Street  of  the 
Burned  Woman  got  its  name. 

Being  managed  under  the  guidance  and  with 
the  approval  of  Santa  Lucia,  the  cruelty  that 

[57] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF     MEXICO 

this  virtuous  young  lady  put  upon  her  own 
beauty  could  lead  only  to  a  good  end.  Present- 
ly, when  the  bitter  pain  of  her  burning  had 
passed  a  little,  Dona  Beatrice  bade  Don  Martin 
come  to  her;  and  he,  coming,  found  her  clad 
in  virgin  white  and  wearing  over  her  poor 
burned  face  a  white  veil.  And  then  the  test 
that  Dona  Beatrice  had  planned  for  her  heart's 
assuring  was  made. 

Little  by  little,  Dona  Beatrice  raised  her 
white  veil  slowly ;  and,  little  by  little,  Don  Mar- 
tin saw  the  face  of  her :  and  the  face  of  her  was 
more  shudderingly  hideous — her  two  beautiful 
eyes  perfectly  alight  and  alive  amid  that  dis- 
torted deathliness  was  what  made  the  shudder 
of  it — than  anything  that  ever  he  had  dreamed 
of  in  his  very  worst  dream!  Therefore,  with 
a  great  joy  and  thankfulness,  Don  Martin  im- 
mediately espoused  Dona  Beatrice:  and  thence- 
forward and  always — most  reasonably  ceasing 
to  love  the  outside  beauty  of  her — gave  her, 
as  she  wanted  him  to  give  her,  the  pure  love 
of  soul  for  soul. 

For  myself,  Senor,  I  think  that  the  conduct 
of  that  young  lady  was  unreasonable,  and  that 
Don  Martin  had  just  occasion  to  be  annoyed. 

[58] 


LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LA  CRUZ 
VERDE1 

THIS  story  is  not  a  sad  one,  Sefior,  like  the 
others.  It  is  a  joyful  story  of  a  gentle- 
man and  a  lady  who  loved  each  other,  and  were 
married,  and  lived  in  happiness  together  until 
they  died.  And  it  was  because  of  his  hap- 
piness that  the  gentleman  caused  to  be  carved 
on  the  corner  of  his  house,  below  the  balcony 
on  which  he  saw  that  day  the  sign  which  gave 
hope  to  him,  this  great  green  cross  of  stone 
that  is  there  still. 

The  house  with  the  green  cross  on  it,  Sefior, 
stands  at  the  corner  of  the  Calle  de  la  Cruz 
Verde — the  street,  you  see,  was  named  for  it — 
and  the  Calle  de  Migueles.  It  was  a  fine  house 
in  the  days  when  Dona  Maria's  father  built  it. 
Now  it  is  old  and  shabby,  and  the  saint  that 
once  stood  in  the  niche  above  the  cross  is  gone. 
But  there  is  an  excellent  pulqueria  there,  Senor 

1  See  Note  IV. 
5  [59] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

—it  is  called  La  Heroina — where  pulque  of  the 
best  and  the  freshest  is  to  be  had  every  morn- 
ing of  every  day  the  whole  year  round. 

I  do  not  know,  Senor,  when  this  matter  hap- 
pened; but  I  have  heard  it  told  that  this  gentle- 
man, who  was  named  Don  Alvaro  de  Villa- 
diego  y  Manrique,  came  to  Mexico  in  the  train 
of  the  Viceroy  Don  Gaston  de  Peralta — so  it 
must  have  happened  a  very  long  while  ago. 

This  Don  Alvaro  was  a  very  handsome  gentle- 
man— tall,  and  slender,  and  fair;  and  he  wore 
clothes  of  white  velvet  worked  with  gold,  and  a 
blue  cap  with  a  white  feather;  and  he  rode  al- 
ways a  very  beautiful  Arabian  horse.  His  hair 
and  his  little  pointed  beard  were  a  golden 
brown,  Senor;  and  he  was  a  sight  to  behold! 

It  happened,  on  a  day,  that  he  was  taking 
the  air  on  his  Arabian;  and  he  was  wearing— 
because  a  festival  of  some  sort  was  in  progress 
— all  of  his  fine  clothes.  So  he  came  prancing 
down  the  Calle  de  Migueles,  and  in  the  balcony 
of  that  corner  house — the  house  on  which  the 
green  cross  now  is — he  saw  a  very  beautiful 
young  lady,  who  was  most  genteel  in  her  ap- 
pearance and  as  white  as  snow.  He  fell  in 
love  with  her  on  that  very  instant;  and  she — 

[60] 


LA      CRUZ      VERDE 


THE  CALLE  DE  LA  CRUZ  VERDE 

although  because  of  her  virtue  and  good  train- 
ing she  did  not  show  it — on  that  very  instant 
fell  in  love  with  him.  Then  he  made  inquiry 
and  found  that  her  name  was  Dona  Maria  de 
Aldarafuente  y  Segura.  Therefore  he  resolved 
to  marry  her.  And  so,  every  day  he  rode  past 
her  balcony  and  looked  up  at  her  with  eyes  full 
of  love.  As  for  Dona  Maria,  she  was  so  well 
brought  up,  and  her  parents  watched  her  so 
narrowly,  that  it  was  a  long  while  before  she 
made  any  answering  sign.  And  for  that  reason, 
Sefior,  she  loved  him  all  the  more  tenderly  in 
her  heart. 

Then  it  happened,  at  the  end  of  a  long  while, 
that  Dona  Maria's  mother  fell  ill;  and  so,  the 
watch  upon  her  being  less  close,  Don  Alvaro 
was  able  to  get  to  her  hands  a  letter  in  which 
he  begged  that  she  would  give  to  him  her  love. 
And  he  told  her  in  his  letter  that — if  she  could 
not  answer  it  with  another  letter — she  should 
give  him  one  of  two  signs  by  which  he  would 
know  her  will.  If  she  did  not  love  him,  she 
was  to  hang  upon  the  railing  of  her  balcony  a 
cross  of  dry  palm-leaves — and  when  he  saw 
that  dry  cross  he  would  most  certainly,  he 
told  her,  that  day  die.  But  if  she  did  love 

[61] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

him,  she  was  to  hang  a  cross  of  green  palm- 
leaves  upon  the  railing  of  her  balcony — and 
when  he  saw  that  green  cross  he  would  know, 
he  told  her,  that  she  had  given  him  her  true 
promise  of  heaven-perfect  happiness  for  all  his 
life  long. 

Being  a  lady,  Senor,  Dona  Maria  let  some 
days  go  by  before  she  hung  on  the  railing  of  her 
balcony  any  cross  at  all — and  during  those 
days  Don  Alvaro  was  within  no  more  than  a 
hair's  breadth  of  going  mad.  And  then — when 
madness  was  so  close  to  him  that  with  one 
single  moment  more  of  waiting  his  wits  would 
have  left  him — on  a  day  of  days,  when  the 
spring-time  sun  was  shining  and  all  the  birds 
were  singing  love-songs  together,  Don  Alvaro 
saw  hanging  on  the  railing  of  Dona  Maria's 
balcony  a  beautiful  bright  green  cross! 

Of  course,  after  that,  Senor,  things  went  fast 
and  well.  By  the  respectable  intervention  of 
a  cleric — who  was  the  friend  of  Don  Alvaro, 
and  who  also  was  the  friend  of  Dona  Maria's 
parents — all  the  difficulties  were  cleared  away 
in  a  hurry;  and  only  a  fortnight  after  the  green 
cross  was  hung  on  the  railing  of  Dona  Maria's 

balcony — that    fortnight    seemed    an    endless 

[62] 


THE  CALLE  DE  LA  CRUZ  VERDE 

time  to  Don  Alvaro,  but  for  such  a  matter  it 
really  was  the  least  that  a  lady  could  get  ready 
in — they  went  together  before  the  altar,  and 
at  the  foot  of  it  they  vowed  to  each  other 
their  love.  And  what  is  best  of  all,  Senor, 
is  that  they  kept  faithfully  their  vow. 

Then  it  was,  being  gladly  married,  that  Don 
Alvaro  caused  the  green  cross  of  stone — so  big 
that  it  rises  to  the  first  floor  from  the  pavement 
—to  be  carved  on  the  corner  of  the  house  that 
thenceforward  they  lived  in ;  and  it  was  carved 
beneath  the  very  balcony  where  had  hung  the 
green  cross  of  palm-leaves  that  had  given  to 
him  Dona  Maria's  true  promise  of  heaven- 
perfect  happiness  for  all  his  life  long. 

And  there  the  green  cross  still  is,  Senor; 
and  the  name  of  the  street,  as  I  have  told  you, 
is  the  Calle  de  la  Cruz  Verde — which  of  course 
proves  that  this  story  is  true. 


LEGEND    OF    LA    MUJER    HERRADA1 

1DO  not  know  when  this  matter  happened, 
Sefior;  but  my  grandfather,  who  told  me 
about  it,  spoke  as  though  all  three  of  them— 
the  priest,  and  the  blacksmith,  and  the  woman 
—had  lived  a  long  while  before  his  time.  How- 
ever, my  grandfather  said  that  the  priest  and 
the  woman,  who  was  his  housekeeper,  pretty 
certainly  lived  in  a  house — it  is  gone  now, 
Sefior — that  was  in  the  street  that  is  called  the 
Puerta  Falsa  de  Santo  Domingo.  And  he  said 
that  the  blacksmith  certainly  did  live  in  a 
house  in  the  Calle  de  lasRejas  de  la  Balvanera— 
because  he  himself  had  seen  the  house,  and  had 
seen  the  farrier's  knife  and  the  pincers  cut  on 
the  stone  arching  above  the  door.  Therefore 
you  perceive,  Senor,  that  my  grandfather  was 
well  acquainted  with  these  people,  and  that 
this  story  is  true. 

The  priest  was  a  secular,  Sefior,  not  belong- 

1  See  Note  V. 
[64] 


LA    MUJER    HERRADA 


ing  to  any  Order;  and  he  and  the  blacksmith 
were  compadres  together — that  is  to  say,  they 
were  close  friends.  It  was  because  the  black- 
smith had  a  great  liking  for  his  compadre,  and 
a  great  respect  for  him,  that  from  time  to  time 
he  urged  him  to  send  away  the  housekeeper; 
but  his  compadre  always  had  some  pleasant 
excuse  to  make  about  the  matter,  and  so  the 
blacksmith  would  be  put  off.  And  things  went 
on  that  way  for  a  number  of  years. 

Now  it  happened,  on  a  night,  that  the  black- 
smith was  wakened  out  of  his  sleep  by  a  great 
pounding  at  the  door  of  his  house;  and  when 
he  got  up  and  went  to  his  door  he  found  stand- 
ing there  two  blacks — they  were  men  whom 
he  never  had  laid  eyes  on — and  with  them  was 
a  she  mule  that  they  had  brought  to  be  shod. 
The  blacks  made  their  excuses  to  him  politely 
for  waking  him  at  that  bad  hour:  telling  him 
that  the  mule  belonged  to  his  compadre,  and 
had  been  sent  to  him  to  be  shod  in  the  night 
and  in  a  hurry  because  his  compadre  of  a  sud- 
den had  occasion  to  go  upon  a  journey,  and 
that  he  must  start  upon  his  journey  very  early 
on  the  morning  of  the  following  day.  Then  the 
blacksmith,  looking  closely  at  the  mule,  saw 

[65]  " 


LEGENDS     OF    THE     CITY     OF     MEXICO 

that  she  really  was  the  mule  of  his  compadre; 
and  so,  for  friendship's  sake,  he  shod  her  with- 
out more  words.  The  blacks  led  the  mule 
away  when  the  shoeing  was  finished;  and,  as 
they  went  off  into  the  night  with  her,  they  fell 
to  beating  her  so  cruelly  with  heavy  sticks 
that  the  blacksmith  talked  to  them  with  great 
severity.  But  the  blacks  kept  on  beating  the 
mule,  and  even  after  they  were  lost  in  the  dark- 
ness the  blacksmith  continued  to  hear  the 
sound  of  their  blows. 

In  some  ways  this  whole  matter  seemed  so 
strange  to  the  blacksmith  that  he  wanted  to 
know  more  about  it.  Therefore  he  got  up  very 
early  in  the  morning  and  went  to  his  com- 
padre's  house:  meaning  to  ask  him  what  was 
the  occasion  of  this  journey  that  had  to  be  taken 
in  such  a  hurry,  and  who  those  strange  blacks 
were  who  so  cruelly  had  beaten  his  meritorious 
mule.  But  when  he  was  come  to  the  house 
he  had  to  wait  a  while  before  the  door  was 
opened;  and  when  at  last  it  did  open,  there  was 
his  compadre  half  asleep — and  his  compadre 
said  that  he  was  not  going  on  any  journey,  and 
that  most  certainly  he  had  not  sent  his  mule 
to  be  shod.  And  then,  as  he  got  wider  awake, 

[66] 


LA  MV1ER.   HERRADA 


LA    MUJER    HERRADA 


he  began  to  laugh  at  the  blacksmith  because 
of  the  trick  that  had  been  put  upon  him;  and 
that  the  woman  might  share  in  the  joke  of  it — 
they  all  were  great  friends  together — he  knock- 
ed at  the  door  of  her  room  and  called  to  her. 
But  the  woman  did  not  answer  back  to  him; 
and  when  he  knocked  louder  and  louder  she 
still  gave  no  sign. 

Then  he,  and  the  blacksmith  too,  became 
anxious  about  the  woman;  and  together  they 
opened  the  door  and  went  into  the  room.  And 
what  they  saw  when  they  were  come  into  the 
room,  Senor,  was  the  most  terrible  sight  that 
ever  was  seen  in  this  world!  For  there,  lying 
upon  her  bed,  was  that  unhappy  woman  look- 
ing all  distraught  and  agonized;  and  nailed 
fast  to  the  feet  and  to  the  hands  of  her  were  the 
very  same  iron  shoes  that  the  blacksmith — 
who  well  knew  his  own  forge- work — had  nailed 
fast  to  the  hoofs  of  the  mule!  Moreover,  upon 
her  body  were  the  welts  and  the  bruises  left 
there  when  the  blacks  had  beaten  the  mule 
with  their  cruel  blows.  And  the  woman, 
Sefior,  was  as  dead  as  she  possibly  could  be. 
So  they  knew  that  what  had  happened  was  a 
divine  punishment,  and  that  the  blacks  were 

[67] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF     MEXICO 

two  devils  who  had  changed  the  woman  into  a 
mule  and  so  had  taken  her  to  be  shod. 

Perceiving,  because  of  such  a  sign  being 
given  him,  Senor,  that  he  had  committed  an 
error,  the  master  of  that  house  of  horror  im- 
mediately went  out  from  it — and  at  once  dis- 
appeared completely  and  never  was  heard  of 
again.  As  for  the  blacksmith,  he  was  so  pained 
by  his  share  in  the  matter  that  always  after- 
ward, until  the  death  of  him,  he  was  a  very  un- 
happy man.  And  that  is  the  story  of  the 
Iron-shod  Woman,  Sefior,  from  first  to  last. 


i 


LEGEND    OF    THE    ACCURSED    BELL1 

THIS  story,  Senor — it  is  about  the  accursed 
bell  that  once  was  the  clock -bell  of  the 
Palace — has  so  many  beginnings  that  the  only 
way  really  to  get  at  the  bones  of  it  would  be  for 
a  number  of  people,  all  talking  at  once,  to  tell 
the  different  first  parts  of  it  at  the  same  time. 
For,  you  see,  the  curse  that  was  upon  this 
bell — that  caused  it  to  be  brought  to  trial 
before  the  Consejo  of  the  Inquisition,  and  by 
the  Consejo  to  be  condemned  to  have  its  wicked 
tongue  torn  out  and  to  be  banished  from  Spain 
to  this  country — was  made  up  of  several  curses 
which  had  been  in  use  in  other  ways  elsewhere 
previously:  so  that  one  beginning  is  with  the 
Moor,  and  another  with  Don  Gil  de  Mar- 
cadante,  and  another  with  the  devil-forged 
armor,  and  still  another  with  the  loosing  of 
all  the  curses  from  the  cross  (wherein  for  some 
hundreds  of  years  they  were  imprisoned)  and 

1  See  Note  VI. 
[69] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

the  fusing  of  them  into  the  one  great  curse 
wherewith  this  unfortunate  bell  was  afflicted— 
which  happened  when  that  holy  emblem  was 
refounded,  and  with  the  metal  of  it  this  bell 
was  made. 

Concerning  the  Moor,  Senor,  I  can  give  you 
very  little  information.  All  that  I  know  about 
him  is  that  he  had  the  bad  name  of  Muslef ;  and 
that  he  was  killed — as  he  deserved  to  be  killed, 
being  an  Infidel — by  a  Christian  knight;  and 
that  this  knight  cut  his  head  off  and  brought  it 
home  with  him  as  an  agreeable  memento  of  the 
occasion,  and  was  very  pleased  with  what  he 
had  done.  Unfortunately,  this  knight  also 
brought  home  with  him  the  Moor's  armor— 
which  was  of  bronze,  and  so  curiously  and  so 
beautifully  wrought  that  it  evidently  had  been 
forged  by  devils,  and  which  was  farther  charged 
with  devilishness  because  it  had  been  worn  by 
an  Infidel;  and  then,  still  more  unfortunately, 
he  neglected  to  have  the  armor  purified  by 
causing  the  devils  to  be  exorcised  out  of  it  by  a 
Christian  priest.  Therefore,  of  course,  the 
devils  remained  in  the  armor — ready  to  make 
trouble  whenever  they  got  the  chance. 

How  Don  Gil  de  Marcadante  came  to  be  the 
[70] 


THE    ACCURSED    BELL 


owner  of  that  accursed  devil-possessed  armor, 
Senor,  I  never  have  heard  mentioned.  Perhaps 
he  bought  it  because  it  happened  to  fit  him; 
and,  certainly — he  being  a  most  unusually  sin- 
ful young  gentleman — the  curse  that  was  upon 
it  and  the  devils  which  were  a  part  of  it  fitted 
him  to  a  hair. 

This  Don  Gil  was  a  student  of  law  in  Toledo ; 
but  his  studies  were  the  very  last  things  to 
which  he  turned  his  attention,  and  the  life 
that  he  led  was  the  shame  of  his  respectable 
brother  and  his  excellent  mother's  despair. 
Habitually,  he  broke  every  law  of  the  Decalogue, 
and  so  brazenly  that  all  the  city  rang  with  the 
stories  of  his  evil  doings  and  his  crimes.  More- 
over, he  was  of  a  blusterous  nature  and  a  born 
brawler:  ready  at  the  slightest  contradiction 
to  burst  forth  with  such  a  torrent  of  blasphe- 
mies and  imprecations  that  his  mouth  seemed 
to  be  a  den  of  snakes  and  toads  and  scorpions; 
and  ever  quick  to  snatch  his  sword  out  and  to 
get  on  in  a  hurry  from  words  to  blows.  As  his 
nearest  approach  to  good  nature  was  after  he 
had  killed  some  one  in  a  quarrel  of  his  own 
making,  and  as  even  at  those  favorable  times 
his  temper  was  of  a  brittleness,  he  was  not 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

looked  upon  as  an  agreeable  companion  and  had 
few  friends. 

This  Don  Gil  had  most  intimate  relations 
with  the  devil,  as  was  proved  in  various  ways. 
Thus,  a  wound  that  he  received  in  one  of  his 
duels  instantly  closed  and  healed  itself;  on  a 
night  of  impenetrable  darkness,  as  he  went 
about  his  evil  doings,  he  was  seen  to  draw 
apart  the  heavy  gratings  of  a  window  as  though 
the  thick  iron  bars  had  been  silken  threads; 
and  a  stone  that  he  cast  at  a  man  in  one  of  his 
rages — mercifully  not  hitting  him — remained 
burning  hot  in  the  place  where  it  had  fallen  for 
several  days.  Moreover,  it  was  known  gen- 
erally that  in  the  night  time,  in  a  very  secret  and 
hidden  part  of  his  dwelling,  he  gave  himself  up 
to  hideous  and  most  horrible  sacrileges  in 
which  his  master  the  devil  had  always  a  part. 
And  so  these  facts — and  others  of  a  like  nature 
— coming  to  the  knowledge  of  the  Holy  Office, 
it  was  perceived  that  he  was  a  sorcerer.  There- 
fore he  was  marched  off — wearing  his  devil- 
forged  armor,  to  which  fresh  curses  had  come 
with  his  use  of  it — to  a  cell  in  the  Inquisition ; 
and  to  make  sure  of  holding  him  fast  until  the 
next  auto  de  f6  came  round,  when  he  was  to 

[72] 


THE    ACCURSED    BELL 


be  burned  properly  and  regularly,  he  was  bound 
with  a  great  chain,  and  the  chain  was  secured 
firmly  to  a  strong  staple  in  the  cell  wall. 

But  the  devil,  Sefior,  sometimes  saves  his 
own.  On  a  morning,  the  jailer  went  as  usual 
to  Don  Gil's  cell  with  the  bread  and  the  water 
for  him ;  and  when  he  had  opened  the  cell  door 
he  saw,  as  he  believed,  Don  Gil  in  his  armor 
waiting  as  usual  for  his  bread  and  his  water: 
but  in  a  moment  he  perceived  that  what  he 
saw  was  not  Don  Gil  in  his  armor,  but  only  the 
accursed  armor  standing  upright  full  of  empti- 
ness; and  that  the  staple  was  torn  out;  and 
that  the  great  chain  was  broken ;  and  that  Don 
Gil  was  gone!  And  then — so  much  to  the 
horror  of  the  jailer  that  he  immediately  went 
mad  of  it — the  empty  armor  began  slowly  to 
walk  up  and  down  the  cell ! 

After  that  time  Don  Gil  never  was  seen,  nor 
was  he  heard  of,  again  on  earth;  and  so  on 
earth,  when  the  time  came  for  burning  him 
at  the  auto  de  fe*,  he  had  to  be  burned  in 
effigy.  However — as  there  could  be  no  doubt 
about  the  place  to  which  the  devil  had  taken 
him — everybody  was  well  satisfied  that  he  got 
his  proper  personal  burning  elsewhere. 

[73] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF     MEXICO 

Then  it  was,  Senor,  that  the  Holy  Office 
most  wisely  ordered  that  that  devil-possessed 
and  doubly  accursed  armor  should  be  melted, 
and  refounded  into  a  cross:  knowing  that  the 
sanctity  of  that  blessed  emblem  would  quiet 
the  curses  and  would  hold  the  devils  still  and 
fast.  Therefore  that  order  was  executed;  and 
the  wisdom  of  it — which  some  had  questioned, 
on  the  ground  that  devils  and  curses  were  un- 
suitable material  to  make  a  cross  of — was 
apparent  as  soon  as  the  bronze  turned  fluid  in 
the  furnace:  because  there  came  from  the 
fiery  seething  midst  of  it — to  the  dazed  terror 
of  the  workmen — shouts  of  devil-laughter, 
and  imprecations  horrible  to  listen  to,  and 
frightful  blasphemies;  and  to  these  succeeded, 
as  the  metal  was  being  poured  into  the  mould, 
a  wild  outburst  of  defiant  remonstrance;  and 
then  all  this  demoniac  fury  died  away — as  the 
metal  hardened  and  became  fixed  as  a  cross— 
at  first  into  half-choked  cries  of  agony,  and 
then  into  confused  lamentations,  and  at  the 
last  into  little  whimpering  moans.  Thus  the 
devils  and  the  curses  were  disposed  of:  and 
then  the  cross — holding  them  imprisoned  in  its 
holy  substance — was  set  up  in  a  little  townlet 

[74] 


THE    ACCURSED    BELL 


not  far  from  Madrid  in  which  just  then  a  cross 
happened  to  be  wanted;  and  there  it  remained 
usefully  for  some  hundreds  of  years. 

At  the  end  of  that  period — by  which  time 
everybody  was  dead  who  knew  what  was  in- 
side of  it — the  cross  was  asked  for  by  the  Prior 
of  a  little  convent  in  that  townlet  near  Madrid, 
who  desired  it  that  he  might  have  it  refounded 
into  a  bell;  and  as  the  Prior  was  a  worthy 
person,  and  as  he  really  needed  a  bell,  his  re- 
quest was  granted.  So  they  made  out  of  the 
cross  a  very  beautiful  bell:  having  on  one  side 
of  it  the  two-headed  eagle;  and  having  on  the 
other  side  of  it  a  calvario;  and  having  at  the 
top  of  it,  for  its  hanging,  two  imperial  lions 
supporting  a  cross-bar  in  the  shape  of  a  crown. 
Then  it  was  hung  in  the  tower  of  the  little 
convent;  and  the  Prior,  and  all  the  Brothers 
with  him,  were  very  much  pleased.  But  that 
worthy  Prior,  and  those  equally  worthy  Broth- 
ers, were  not  pleased  for  long,  Senor:  because 
the  curses  and  the  devils  all  were  loose  again — 
and  their  chance  to  do  new  wickednesses  had 
come! 

On  a  night  of  blackness,  without  any  warn- 
ing whatever,  the  whole  of  the  townlet  was 

6  [75] 


LEGENDS     OF     THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

awakened  by  the  prodigious  clangor  of  a  bell 
furiously  ringing.  In  an  instant — seeking  the 
cause  of  this  disturbance — everybody  came  out 
into  the  night's  blackness :  the  Senor  Cura,  the 
Senor  Alcalde,  the  alguaciles,  the  Prior,  the 
Brothers,  all  the  townsfolk  to  the  very  last  one. 
And  when  they  had  looked  about  them  they 
found  that  the  cause  of  the  disturbance  was  the 
new  bell  of  the  convent :  which  was  ringing  with 
such  an  excessive  violence  that  the  night's 
blackness  was  corrupted  with  its  noise. 

Terror  was  upon  everyone;  and  greater  terror 
was  upon  every  one  when  it  was  found  out  that 
the  door  of  the  bell-tower  was  locked,  and  that 
the  bell  was  ringing  of  its  lone  self:  because  the 
bad  fact  then  became  evident  that  only  devils 
ould  have  the  matter  in  hand.  The  Senor 
Alcalde  alone — being  a  very  valiant  gentleman, 
and  not  much  believing  in  devils — was  not 
satisfied  with  that  finding.  Therefore  the 
Senor  Alcalde  caused  the  door  to  be  unlocked 
and,  carrying  a  torch  with  him,  entered  the 
bell-tower;  and  there  he  found  the  bell-rope 
crazily  flying  up  and  down  as  though  a  dozen 
men  were  pulling  it,  and  nobody  was  pulling 
it  —  which  sight  somewhat  shook  his  nerves. 

[76] 


THE    ACCURSED    BELL 


However,  because  of  his  valorousness,  he  only 
stopped  to  cross  himself;  and  then  he  went  on 
bravely  up  the  belfry  stair.  But  what  he  saw 
when  he  was  come  into  the  belfry  fairly  brought 
him  to  a  stand.  For  there  was  the  bell  ringing 
tempestuously;  and  never  a  visible  hand  was 
near  it ;  and  the  only  living  thing  that  he  found 
in  the  belfry  was  a  great  black  cat  with  its  tail 
bushed  out  and  its  fur  bristling — which  evil 
animal  for  a  moment  leered  at  him  malignantly, 
with  its  green  eyes  gleaming  in  the  torch-light, 
and  then  sprang  past  him  and  dashed  down  the 
stair. 

Then  the  Senor  Alcalde,  no  longer  doubting 
that  the  bell  was  being  rung  by  devils,  and  him- 
self not  knowing  how  to  manage  devils,  called 
down  from  the  belfry  to  the  Senor  Cura  to  come 
up  and  take  charge  of  the  matter:  whereupon 
the  Senor  Cura,  holding  his  courage  in  both 
hands,  did  come  up  into  the  belfry,  bringing  his 
hisopo  with  him,  and  fell  to  sprinkling  the  bell 
with  holy  water — which  seemed  to  him,  so  far 
as  he  could  see  his  way  into  that  difficult 
tangle,  the  best  thing  that  he  could  do.  But 
his  doing  it,  of  course,  was  the  very  worst  thing 
that  he  could  have  done:  because,  you  see, 

[77] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

Senor,  the  devils  were  angered  beyond  all  en- 
durance by  being  scalded  with  the  holy  water 
(that  being  the  effect  that  holy  water  has  upon 
devils)  and  so  only  rang  the  bell  the  more 
furiously  in  their  agony  of  pain.  Then  the 
Senor  Alcalde  and  the  Sefior  Cura  perceived 
that  they  could  not  quiet  the  devils,  and  de- 
cided to  give  up  trying  to.  Therefore  they  came 
down  from  the  belfry  together — and  they,  and 
everybody  with  them,  went  away  through  the 
night's  blackness  crossing  themselves,  and  were 
glad  to  be  safe  again  in  their  homes. 

The  next  day  the  Senor  Alcalde  made  a 
formal  inquest  into  the  whole  matter:  citing 
to  appear  before  him  all  the  townsfolk  and  all 
the  Brothers,  and  questioning  them  closely 
every  one.  And  the  result  of  this  inquest  was 
to  make  certain  that  the  bell-ringer  of  the  con- 
vent had  not  rung  the  bell;  nor  had  any  other 
of  the  Brothers  rung  it;  nor  had  any  of  the 
townsfolk  rung  it.  Therefore  the  Senor  Alcalde, 
and  with  him  the  Senor  Cura — whose  opinion 
was  of  importance  in  such  a  matter — decided 
that  the  devil  had  rung  it:  and  their  decision 
was  accepted  by  everybody,  because  that  was 
what  everybody  from  the  beginning  had  believed. 

[78] 


THE    ACCURSED    BELL 


Therefore — because  such  devilish  doings  af- 
fected the  welfare  of  the  whole  kingdom — a 
formal  report  of  all  that  had  happened  was  sub- 
mitted to  the  Cortes;  and  the  Cortes,  after 
pondering  the  report  seriously,  perceived  that 
the  matter  was  ecclesiastical  and  referred  it 
to  the  Consejo  of  the  Inquisition ;  and  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Consejo,  in  due  course,  ordered  that 
all  the  facts  should  be  digested  and  regularized 
and  an  opinion  passed  upon  them  by  their 
Fiscal. 

Being  a  very  painstaking  person,  the  Fiscal 
went  at  his  work  with  so  great  an  earnestness 
that  for  more  than  a  year  he  was  engaged  upon 
it.  First  he  read  all  that  he  could  find  to  read 
about  bells  in  all  the  Spanish  law  books,  from 
the  Siete  Partidas  of  Alonzo  the  Wise  downward ; 
then  he  read  all  that  he  could  find  about  bells 
in  such  law  books  of  foreign  countries  as  were 
accessible  to  him;  then,  in  the  light  of  the  in- 
formation so  obtained,  he  digested  and  reg- 
ularized the  facts  of  the  case  presented  for  his 
consideration  and  applied  himself  to  writing 
his  opinion  upon  them;  and  then,  at  last,  he 
came  before  the  Consejo  and  read  to  that  body 
his  opinion  from  beginning  to  end.  Through 

[79] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

the  whole  of  a  long  day  the  Fiscal  read  his 
opinion;  and  through  the  whole  of  the  next  day, 
and  the  next,  and  the  next;  and  at  the  end  of 
the  fourth  day  he  finished  the  reading  of  his 
opinion  and  sat  down.  And  the  opinion  of  the 
Fiscal  was  that  the  devil  had  rung  the  bell. 

Then  the  Consejo,  after  debating  for  three 
days  upon  what  had  been  read  by  the  Fiscal, 
gave  formal  approval  to  his  opinion;  and  in 
conformity  with  it  the  Consejo  came  to  these 
conclusions: 

1.  That  the  ringing  of  the  bell  was  a  matter 
of  no  importance  to  good  Christians. 

2.  That  the  bell,  being  possessed  of  a  devil, 
should  have  its  tongue  torn  out:  so  that  never 
again  should  it  dare  to  ring  of  its  lone  devilish 
self,  to  the  peril  of  human  souls. 

3.  That  the  bell,  being  dangerous  to  good 
Christians,  should  be  banished  from  the  Spanish 
Kingdom  to  the  Indies,   and  forever  should 
remain  tongueless  and  exiled  over  seas. 

Thereupon,  that  wise  sentence  was  executed. 
The  devil-possessed  bell  was  taken  down  from 
the  belfry  of  the  little  convent,  and  its  wicked 
tongue  was  torn  out  of  it;  then  it  was  carried 

shamefully  and  with  insults  to  the  coast ;  then 

[80] 


THE    ACCURSED    BELL 


it  was  put  on  board  of  one  of  the  ships  of  the 
flota  bound  for  Mexico;  and  in  Mexico,  in  due 
course,  it  arrived.  Being  come  here,  and  no 
orders  coming  with  it  regarding  its  disposition, 
it  was  brought  from  Vera  Cruz  to  the  Capital 
and  was  placed  in  an  odd  corner  of  one  of  the 
corridors  of  the  Palace:  and  there  it  remained 
quietly — everybody  being  shy  of  meddling 
with  a  bell  that  was  known  to  be  alive  with 
witchcraft — for  some  hundreds  of  years. 

In  that  same  corner  it  still  was,  Senor,  when 
the  Conde  de  Revillagigedo — only  a  little  more 
than  a  century  ago — became  Viceroy;  and  as 
soon  as  that  most  energetic  gentleman  saw  it 
he  wanted  to  know  in  a  hurry — being  indis- 
posed to  let  anything  or  anybody  rust  in  idle- 
ness— why  a  bell  that  needed  only  a  tongue  in 
it  to  make  it  serviceable  was  not  usefully  em- 
ployed. For  some  time  no  one  could  tell  him 
anything  more  about  the  bell  than  that  there 
was  a  curse  upon  it;  and  that  answer  did  not 
satisfy  him,  because  curses  did  not  count  for 
much  in  his  very  practical  mind.  In  the  end 
a  very  old  clerk  in  the  Secretariat  gave  him  the 
bell's  true  story;  and  proved  the  truth  of  it  by 
bringing  out  from  deep  in  the  archives  an 

[Si] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

ancient  yellowed  parchment:  which  was  pre- 
cisely the  royal  order,  following  the  decree  of 
the  Consejo,  that  the  bell  should  have  its  tongue 
torn  out,  and  forever  should  remain  tongueless 
and  exiled  over  seas. 

With  that  order  before  him,  even  the  Conde 
de  Revillagigedo,  Senor,  did  not  venture  to  have 
a  new  tongue  put  into  the  bell  and  to  set  it  to 
regular  work  again;  but  what  he  did  do  came 
to  much  the  same  thing.  At  that  very  time  he 
was  engaged  in  pushing  to  a  brisk  completion 
the  repairs  to  the  Palace — that  had  gone  on  for 
a  hundred  years  languishingly,  following  the 
burning  of  it  in  the  time  of  the  Viceroy  Don 
Gaspar  de  la  Cerda — and  among  his  repairings 
was  the  replacement  of  the  Palace  clock.  Now 
a  clock-bell,  Senor,  does  not  need  a  tongue  in 
it,  being  struck  with  hammers  from  the  out- 
side; and  so  the  Conde,  whose  wits  were  of  an 
alertness,  perceived  in  a  moment  that  by  em- 
ploying the  bell  as  a  clock-bell  he  could  make 
it  useful  again  without  traversing  the  king's 
command.  And  that  was  what  immediately 
he  did  with  it — and  that  was  how  the  Palace 
clock  came  to  have  foisted  upon  it  this  accursed 

bell. 

[82] 


THE    ACCURSED    BELL 


But,  so  far  as  I  have  heard,  Senor,  this  bell 
conducted  itself  as  a  clock-bell  with  a  perfect 
regularity  and  propriety:  probably  because  the 
devils  which  were  in  it  had  grown  too  old  to  be 
dangerously  hurtful,  and  because  the  curse 
that  was  upon  it  had  weakened  with  time. 
I  myself,  as  a  boy  and  as  a  young  man,  have 
heard  it  doing  its  duty  always  punctually; 
and  no  doubt  it  still  would  be  doing  its  duty 
had  not  the  busybodying  French  seen  fit — 
during  the  period  of  the  Intervention,  when 
they  meddled  with  everything — to  put  another 
bell  in  the  place  of  it  and  to  have  it  melted 
down.  What  was  done  with  the  metal  when 
the  bell  was  melted,  Senor,  I  do  not  know;  but 
I  have  been  told  by  an  old  founder  of  my 
acquaintance  that  nothing  was  done  with  it: 
because,  as  he  very  positively  assured  me, 
when  the  bell  was  melted  the  metal  of  it  went 
sour  in  the  furnace  and  refused  to  be  recast. 

If  that  is  true,  Senor,  it  looks  as  though  all 
those  devils  in  the  bell — which  came  to  it 
from  the  Moor  and  from  the  devil-forged 
armor  and  from  Don  Gil  de  Marcadante — still 
had  some  strength  for  wickedness  left  to  them 
even  in  their  old  age. 

[83] 


LEGEND    OF    THE    CALLEJON 
PADRE    LECUONA1 


DEL 


WHO  Padre  Lecuona  was,  Senor,  and  what 
he  did  or  had  done  to  him  in  this  street 
that  caused  his  name  to  be  given  to  it,  I  do 
not  know.  The  Padre  about  whom  I  now  am 
telling  you,  who  had  this  strange  thing  happen 
to  him  in  this  street,  was  named  Lanza;  but  he 
was  called  by  everybody  Lanchitas — according 
to  our  custom  of  giving  such  endearing  dimin- 
utives to  the  names  of  those  whom  we  love. 
He  deserved  to  be  loved,  this  excellent  Padre 
Lanchitas:  because  he  himself  loved  every- 
body, and  freely  gave  to  all  in  sickness  or  in 
trouble  his  loving  aid.  Confessing  to  him  was 
a  pleasure;  and  his  absolution  was  worth 
having,  because  it  was  given  always  with  the 
approval  of  the  good  God.  My  own  grand- 
father knew  him  well,  Senor,  having  known  a 
man  who  had  seen  him  when  he  was  a  boy. 

1  See  Note  VII. 
[84] 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL   PADRE    LECUONA 

Therefore  this  strange  story  about  him  is 
true. 

On  a  night — and  it  was  a  desponding  night, 
because  rain  was  falling  and  there  was  a  chill 
wind — Padre  Lanchitas  was  hurrying  to  the 
house  of  a  friend  of  his,  where  every  week  he  and 
three  other  gentlemen  of  a  Friday  evening  played 
malilla  together.  It  is  a  very  serious  game, 
Senor,  and  to  play  it  well  requires  a  large  mind. 
He  was  late,  and  that  was  why  he  was  hurrying. 

When  he  was  nearly  come  to  the  house  of  his 
friend — and  glad  to  get  there  because  of  the 
rain  and  the  cold — he  was  stopped  by  an  old 
woman  plucking  at  his  wet  cloak  and  speaking 
to  him.  And  the  old  woman  begged  him  for 
God's  mercy  to  come  quickly  and  confess  a 
dying  man.  Now  that  is  a  call,  Senor,  that  a 
priest  may  not  refuse;  but  because  his  not 
joining  them  would  inconvenience  his  friends, 
who  could  not  play  at  their  game  of  malilla 
without  him,  he  asked  the  woman  why  she  did 
not  go  to  the  parish  priest  of  the  parish  in  which 
the  dying  man  was.  And  the  woman  an- 
swered him  that  only  to  him  would  the  dying 
man  confess;  and  she  begged  him  again  for 
God's  mercy  to  hurry  with  her,  or  the  con- 

[85] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

fession  would  not  be  made  in  time — and  then 
the  sin  of  his  refusal  would  be  heavy  on  his 
own  soul  when  he  himself  came  to  die. 

So,  then,  the  Padre  went  with  her,  walking 
behind  her  along  the  cold  dark  streets  in  the 
mud  with  the  rain  falling;  and  at  last  she 
brought  him  to  the  eastern  end  of  this  street 
that  is  called  the  Callejdn  del  Padre  Lecuona, 
and  to  the  long  old  house  there  that  faces  toward 
the  church  of  El  Carmen  and  has  a  hump  in 
the  middle  on  the  top  of  its  front  wall.  It  is 
a  very  old  house,  Senor.  It  was  built  in  the 
time  when  we  had  Viceroys,  instead  of  the 
President  Porfirio;  and  it  has  no  windows- 
only  a  great  door  for  the  entering  of  carriages  at 
one  end  of  it,  and  a  small  door  in  the  middle  of 
it,  and  another  small  door  at  the  other  end.  A 
person  who  sells  charcoal,  Senor,  lives  there  now. 

It  was  to  the  middle  door  that  the  woman 
brought  Padre  Lanchitas.  The  door  was  not 
fastened,  and  at  a  touch  she  pushed  it  open 
and  in  they  went  together — and  the  first  thing 
that  the  Padre  noticed  when  he  was  come 
through  the  doorway  was  a  very  bad  smell. 
It  was  the  sort  of  smell,  Senor,  that  is  found  in 
very  old  houses  of  which  all  the  doors  and 

[86] 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    PADRE    LECUONA 

windows  have  been  shut  fast  for  a  very  long 
time.  But  the  Padre  had  matters  more  im- 
portant than  bad  smells  to  attend  to,  and  all 
that  he  did  about  it  was  to  hold  his  hand- 
kerchief close  to  his  nose.  One  little  poor 
candle,  stuck  on  a  nail  in  a  board,  was  set  in  a 
far  corner;  and  in  another  corner  was  a  man 
lying  on  a  mat  spread  upon  the  earth  floor;  and 
there  was  nothing  else  whatever — excepting 
cobwebs  everywhere,  and  the  bad  smell,  and 
the  old  woman,  and  the  Padre  himself — in  that 
room. 

That  he  might  see  him  whom  he  was  to 
confess,  Padre  Lanchitas  took  the  candle  in 
his  hand  and  went  to  the  man  on  the  mat  and 
pulled  aside  the  ragged  and  dirty  old  blanket 
that  covered  him;  and  then  he  started  back 
with  a  very  cold  qualm  in  his  stomach,  saying 
to  the  woman:  "This  man  already  is  dead!  He 
cannot  confess !  And  he  has  the  look  of  having 
been  dead  for  a  very  long  while!"  And  that 
was  true,  Sefior — for  what  he  saw  was  a  dry 
and  bony  head,  with  yellow  skin  drawn  tight 
over  it,  having  shut  eyes  deep  sunken.  Also, 
the  two  hands  which  rested  crossed  upon  the 
man's  breast  were  no  more  than  the  same  dry 

[87] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 


yellow  skin  shrunk  close  over  shrunken  bones! 
And,  seeing  such  a  bad  strange  sight,  the 
Padre  was  uneasy  and  alarmed. 

But  the  woman  said  back  to  him  with  as- 
surance, yet  also  coaxingly:  "This  man  is 
going  to  confess,  Padrecito" — and,  so  speak- 
ing, she  fetched  from  its  far  corner  the  board 
with  the  nail  in  it,  and  took  the  candle  from 
him  and  set  it  fast  again  upon  the  nail.  And 
then  the  man  himself,  in  the  light  and  in  the 
shadow,  sat  up  on  the  mat  and  began  to  recite 
in  a  voice  that  had  a  rusty  note  in  it  the 
Confiteor  Deo — and  after  that,  of  course,  there 
was  nothing  for  the  Padre  to  do  but  to  listen 
to  him  till  the  end. 

What  he  told,  Senor,  being  told  under  the 
seal  of  confession,  of  course  remained  always 
a  secret.  But  it  was  known,  later,  that  he 
spoke  of  matters  which  had  happened  a  good 
two  hundred  years  back — as  the  Padre  knew 
because  he  was  a  great  reader  of  books  of  his- 
tory; and  that  he  put  himself  into  the  very 
middle  of  those  matters  and  made  the  terrible 
crime  that  he  had  committed  a  part  of  them; 
and  that  he  ended  by  telling  that  in  that 
ancient  time  he  had  been  killed  in  a  brawl  sud- 

[88] 


: 


ELCALLEJON  DEL  PADRE  LECVONA   i  jy 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    PADRE    LECUONA 

denly,  and  so  had  died  tmconfessed  and  un- 
shriven,  and  that  ever  since  his  soul  had  blis- 
tered in  hell. 

Hearing  such  wild  talk  from  him,  the  Padre 
was  well  satisfied  that  the  poor  man's  wits  were 
wandering  in  his  fever — as  happens  with  many, 
Sefior,  in  their  dying  time — and  so  bade  him 
lie  quietly  and  rest  himself;  and  promised  that 
he  would  come  to  him  and  hear  his  confession 
later  on. 

But  the  man  cried  out  very  urgently  that 
that  must  not  be:  declaring  that  by  God's 
mercy  he  had  been  given  one  single  chance  to 
come  back  again  out  of  Eternity  to  confess  his 
sins  and  to  be  shriven  of  them;  and  that  unless 
the  Padre  did  hearken  then  and  there  to  the 
confession  of  his  sins,  and  did  shrive  him  of 
them,  this  one  chance  that  God's  mercy  had 
given  him  would  be  lost  and  wasted — and 
back  he  would  go  forever  to  the  hot  torments 
of  hell. 

Therefore  the  Padre — being  sure,  by  that 
time,  that  the  man  was  quite  crazy  in  his 
fever — let  him  talk  on  till  he  had  told  the  whole 
story  of  his  frightful  sinnings;  and  then  did 
shrive  him,  to  quiet  him — just  as  you  promise 

[89] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

the  moon  to  a  sick,  fretful  child.  And  the 
devil  must  have  been  very  uneasy  that  night, 
Senor,  because  the  good  nature  of  that  kind- 
hearted  priest  lost  to  him  what  by  rights  was 
his  own! 

As  Padre  Lanchitas  spoke  the  last  words  of 
the  absolution,  the  man  fell  back  again  on  his 
mat  with  a  sharp  crackling  sound  like  that  of 
dry  bones  rattling;  and  the  woman  had  left 
the  room ;  and  the  candle  was  sputtering  out  its 
very  last  sparks.  Therefore  the  Padre  went 
out  in  a  hurry  through  the  still  open  door  into 
the  street;  and  no  sooner  had  he  come  there 
than  the  door  closed  behind  him  sharply,  as 
though  some  one  on  the  inside  had  pushed 
against  it  strongly  to  shut  it  fast. 

Out  in  the  street  he  had  expected  to  find  the 
old  woman  waiting  for  him;  and  he  looked 
about  for  her  everywhere,  desiring  to  tell  her 
that  she  must  send  for  him  when  the  man's 
fever  left  him — that  he  might  return  and  hear 
from  the  man  a  real  confession,  and  really 
shrive  him  of  his  sins.  But  the  old  woman  was 
quite  gone.  Thinking  that  she  must  have 
slipped  past  him  in  the  darkness  into  the  house, 
he  knocked  at  the  door  lightly,  and  then  loudly; 

[90] 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    PADRE    LECUONA 

but  no  answer  came  to  his  knocking — and 
when  he  tried  to  push  the  door  open,  using  all 
his  strength,  it  held  fast  against  his  pushing  as 
firmly  as  though  it  had  been  a  part  of  the  stone 
wall. 

So  the  Padre,  having  no  liking  for  standing 
there  in  the  cold  and  rain  uselessly,  hurried 
onward  to  his  friend's  house — and  was  glad 
to  get  into  the  room  where  his  friends  were 
waiting  for  him,  and  where  plenty  of  candles 
were  burning,  and  where  it  was  dry  and  warm. 

He  had  walked  so  fast  that  his  forehead  was 
wet  with  sweat  when  he  took  his  hat  off,  and 
to  dry  it  he  put  his  hand  into  his  pocket  for  his 
handkerchief;  but  his  handkerchief  was  not  in 
his  pocket — and  then  he  knew  that  he  must 
have  dropped  it  in  the  house  where  the  dying 
man  lay.  It  was  not  just  a  common  hand- 
kerchief, Senor,  but  one  very  finely  embroidered 
—having  the  letters  standing  for  his  name 
worked  upon  it,  with  a  wreath  around  them — 
that  had  been  made  for  him  by  a  nun  of  his 
acquaintance  in  a  convent  of  which  he  was  the 
almoner;  and  so,  as  he  did  not  at  all  like  to  lose 
it,  he  sent  his  friend's  servant  to  that  old  house 
to  get  it  back  again.  After  a  good  long  while, 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXIC 

the  servant  returned:  telling  that  the  house 
was  shut  fast,  and  that  one  of  the  watch — see- 
ing him  knocking  at  the  door  of  it — had  told 
him  that  to  knock  there  was  only  to  wear  out 
his  knuckles,  because  no  one  had  lived  in  that 
house  for  years  and  years ! 

All  of  this,  as  well  as  all  that  had  gone 
before  it,  was  so  strange  and  so  full  of  mystery, 
that  Padre  Lanchitas  then  told  to  his  three 
friends  some  part  of  what  that  evening  had 
happened  to  him;  and  it  chanced  that  one  of 
the  three  was  the  notary  who  had  in  charge 
the  estate  of  which  that  very  house  was  a  part. 
And  the  notary  gave  Padre  Lanchitas  his  true 
word  for  it  that  the  house — because  of  some 
entangling  law  matters — had  stood  locked  fast 
and  empty  for  as  much  as  a  lifetime;  and  he 
declared  that  Padre  Lanchitas  must  be  mixing 
that  house  with  some  other  house — which 
would  be  easy,  since  all  that  had  happened  had 
been  in  the  rainy  dark.  But  the  Padre,  on  his 
side,  was  sure  that  he  had  made  no  mistake  in 
the  matter;  and  they  both  got  a  little  warm  in 
their  talk  over  it ;  and  they  ended  by  agreeing— 
so  that  they  might  come  to  a  sure  settlement 
—to  meet  at  that  old  house,  and  the  notary  to 

[92] 


THE  CALLEJON  DEL  PADRE  LECUONA 

bring  with  him  the  key  of  it,  on  the  morning 
of  the  following  day. 

So  they  did  meet  there,  Senor,  and  they  went 
to  the  middle  door — the  one  that  had  opened 
at  a  touch  from  the  old  woman's  hand.  But 
all  around  that  door,  as  the  notary  bade  Padre 
Lanchitas  observe  before  they  opened  it,  were 
unbroken  cobwebs ;  and  the  keyhole  was  choked 
with  the  dust  that  had  blown  into  it,  little  by 
little,  in  the  years  that  had  passed  since  it  had 
known  a  key.  And  the  other  two  doors  of  the 
house  were  just  the  same.  However,  Padre 
Lanchitas  would  not  admit,  even  with  that 
proof  against  him,  that  he  was  mistaken;  and 
the  notary,  smiling  at  him  but  willing  to  satisfy 
him,  picked  out  the  dust  from  the  keyhole  and 
got  the  key  into  it  and  forced  back  hardly  the 
rusty  bolt  of  the  lock — and  together  they  went 
inside. 

Coming  from  the  bright  sunshine  into  that 
dusky  place — lighted  only  from  the  doorway, 
and  the  door  but  part  way  open  because  it  was 
loose  on  its  old  hinges  and  stuck  fast — they 
could  see  at  first  nothing  more  than  that  the 
room  was  empty  and  bare.  What  they  did 
find,  though — and  the  Padre  well  remembered 

[93] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEX1C 

it — was  the  bad  smell.  But  the  notary  said 
that  just  such  bad  smells  were  in  all  old  shut-up 
houses,  and  it  proved  nothing;  while  the  cob- 
webs and  the  closed  keyhole  did  prove  most 
certainly  that  Padre  Lanchitas  had  not  en- 
tered that  house  the  night  before — and  that 
nobody  had  entered  it  for  years  and  years.  To 
what 'the  notary  said  there  was  nothing  to  be 
answered;  and  the  Padre — not  satisfied,  but 
forced  to  give  in  to  such  strong  proof  that  he 
was  mistaken — was  about  to  come  away  out  of 
the  house,  and  so  have  done  with  it.  But  just 
then,  Senor,  he  made  a  very  wonderful  and 
horrifying  discovery.  By  that  time  his  eyes 
had  grown  accustomed  to  the  shadows;  and  so 
he  saw  over  in  one  corner — lying  on  the  floor 
close  beside  where  the  man  had  lain  whose 
confession  he  had  taken — a  glint  of  something 
whitish.  And,  Senor,  it  was  his  very  own  hand- 
kerchief that  he  had  lost! 

That  was  enough  to  satisfy  even  the  notary; 
and  as  nothing  more  was  to  be  done  there  they 
came  out,  and  gladly,  from  that  bad  dark  place 
into  the  sunshine.  As  for  Padre  Lanchitas, 
Senor,  he  was  all  mazed  and  daunted — know- 
ing then  the  terrible  truth  that  he  had  con- 

[94] 


THE    CALLEJON    DEL    PADRE    LECUONA 

fessed  a  dead  man;  and,  what  was  worse,  that 
he  had  given  absolution  to  a  sinful  soul  come 
hot  to  him  from  hell!  He  held  his  hat  in  his 
hand  as  he  came  out  from  the  house — and 
never  did  he  put  it  on  again:  bareheaded  he 
went  thenceforward  until  the  end  of  his  days! 
He  was  a  very  good  man,  and  his  life  had  been 
always  a  very  holy  life;  but  from  that  time  on, 
till  the  death  of  him,  he  made  it  still  holier 
by  his  prayings  and  his  fastings  and  his  endless 
helpings  of  the  poorest  of  the  poor.  At  last 
he  died.  And  it  is  said,  Sefior,  that  in  the 
walls  of  that  old  house  they  found  dead  men's 
bones. 


LEGEND    OF    THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 

A  PPARITIONS  of  dead  people,  Senor,  of 
/"Y  course  are  numerous  and  frequent.  I  my- 
self— as  on  other  occasions  I  have  mentioned 
to  you — have  seen  several  spectres,  and  so 
have  various  of  my  friends.  But  this  spectre 
of  which  I  now  am  telling  you — that  appeared 
on  the  Plaza  Mayor  at  noonday,  and  was  seen 
by  everybody — was  altogether  out  of  the  or- 
dinary: being  not  in  the  least  a  dead  person, 
but  a  person  who  wore  his  own  flesh  and  bones 
in  the  usual  manner  and  was  alive  in  them; 
yet  who  certainly  was  walking  and  talking 
here  on  the  Plaza  Mayor  of  this  City  of  Mexico 
in  the  very  self -same  moment  that  he  also  was 
walking  and  talking  in  a  most  remote  and 
wholly  different  part  of  the  world.  Therefore— 
in  spite  of  his  wearing  his  own  flesh  and  bones 
in  the  usual  manner  and  being  alive  in  them— 
it  was  certain  that  he  was  a  spectre:  because  it 

1  See  Note  VIII. 
[96] 


THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 


was  certain  that  his  journeying  could  have 
been  made  only  on  devils'  wings.  The  day 
on  which  this  marvel  happened  is  known  most 
exactly:  because  it  happened  on  the  day  after 
the  day  that  the  Governor  of  the  Filipinas, 
Don  Gomez  P6rez  Dasmarinas,  had  his  head 
murderously  split  open,  and  died  of  it,  in  the 
Molucca  Islands;  and  that  gentleman  was 
killed  in  that  bad  manner  on  the  25th  of  Octo- 
ber in  the  year  1593.  Therefore — since  every- 
thing concerning  this  most  extraordinary  hap- 
pening is  known  with  so  great  an  accuracy — 
there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  but  that  in 
every  particular  all  that  I  now  am  telling  you 
is  strictly  true. 

Because  it  began  in  two  different  places  at 
the  same  time,  it  is  not  easy  to  say  certainly, 
Senor,  which  end  of  this  story  is  the  beginning 
of  it;  but  the  beginning  of  it  is  this:  On  a  day, 
being  the  day  that  I  have  just  named  to  you, 
the  sentries  on  guard  at  the  great  doors  of  the 
Palace — and  also  the  people  who  at  that  time 
happened  to  be  walking  near  by  on  the  Plaza 
Mayor — of  a  sudden  saw  an  entirely  strange 
sentry  pacing  his  beat  before  the  great  doors 
of  the  Palace  quite  in  the  regular  manner: 

[97] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

marching  back  and  forth,  with  his  gun  on  his 
shoulder;  making  his  turns  with  a  soldierly 
propriety;  saluting  correctly  those  entitled  to 
salutes  who  passed  him ;  and  in  every  way  con- 
ducting himself  as  though  he  duly  had  been 
posted  there — but  making  his  marchings  and 
his  turnings  and  his  salutings  with  a  wondering 
look  on  the  face  of  him,  and  having  the  air  of 
one  who  is  all  bedazzled  and  bemazed. 

What  made  every  one  know  that  he  was  a 
stranger  in  this  City  was  that  the  uniform 
which  he  wore  was  of  a  wholly  different  cut 
and  fabric  from  that  belonging  to  any  regiment 
at  that  time  quartered  here:  being,  in  fact — as 
was  perceived  by  one  of  the  sentries  who  had 
served  in  the  Filipinas — the  uniform  worn  in 
Manila  by  the  Palace  Guard.  He  was  a  man 
of  forty,  or  thereabouts ;  well  set  up  and  sturdy ; 
and  he  had  the  assured  carriage — even  in  his 
bedazzlement  and  bemazement — of  an  old 
soldier  who  had  seen  much  campaigning,  and 
who  could  take  care  of  himself  through  any 
adventure  in  which  he  might  happen  to  land. 
Moreover,  his  talk — when  the  time  came  for 
him  to  explain  himself — went  with  a  devil- 
may-care  touch  to  it  that  showed  him  to  be  a 

[98] 


THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 


man  who  even  with  witches  and  demons  was 
quite  ready  to  hold  his  own. 

His  explanation  of  himself,  of  course,  was 
not  long  in  coming:  because  the  Captain  of  the 
Guard  at  once  was  sent  for;  and  when  the 
Captain  of  the  Guard  came  he  asked  the 
stranger  sentry  most  sharply  what  his  name 
was,  and  where  he  came  from,  and  what  he  was 
doing  on  a  post  to.  which  he  had  not  been 
assigned. 

To  these  questions  the  stranger  sentry  made 
answer — speaking  with  an  easy  confidence,  and 
not  in  the  least  ruffled  by  the  Captain's  sharp- 
ness with  him — that  his  name  was  Gil  Perez; 
that  he  came  from  the  Filipinas ;  and  that  what 
he  was  doing  was  his  duty  as  near  as  he  could 
come  to  it :  because  he  had  been  duly  detailed  to 
stand  sentry  that  morning  before  the  Gover- 
nor's Palace — and  although  this  was  not  the 
Governor's  Palace  before  which  he  had  been 
posted  it  certainly  was  a  governor's  palace, 
and  that  he  therefore  was  doing  the  best  that 
he  could  do.  And  to  these  very  curious  state- 
ments he  added — quite  casually,  as  though  re- 
ferring to  an  ordinary  matter  of  current  in- 
terest— that  the  Governor  of  the  Filipinas,  Don 

[99] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY     OF     MEXICO 


Gomez  P6rez  Dasmarinas,  had  had  his  head 
murderously  split  open,  and  was  dead  of  it,  in 
the  Molucca  Islands  the  evening  before. 

Well,  Senor,  you  may  fancy  what  a  nest  of 
wasps  was  let  loose  when  this  Gil  P£rez  gave 
to  the  Captain  of  the  Guard  so  incredible  an 
account  of  himself ;  and,  on  top  of  it,  told  that 
the  Governor  of  the  Filipinas  had  been  badly 
killed  on  the  previous  evening  in  islands  in  the 
Pacific  Ocean  thousands  and  thousands  of 
miles  away !  It  was  a  matter  that  the  Viceroy 
himself  had  to  look  into.  Therefore  before  the 
Viceroy — who  at  that  time  was  the  good  Don 
Luis  de  Velasco — Gil  P6rez  was  brought  in  a 
hurry:  and  to  the  Viceroy  he  told  over  again 
just  the  same  story,  in  just  the  same  cool 
manner,  and  in  just  the  same  words. 

Very  naturally,  the  Viceroy  put  a  great  many 
keen  questions  to  him;  and  to  those  questions 
he  gave  his  answers — or  said  plainly  that  he 
could  not  give  any  answers — with  the  assured 
air  of  an  old  soldier  who  would  not  lightly  suf- 
fer his  word  to  be  doubted  even  by  a  Viceroy; 
and  who  was  ready,  in  dealing  with  persons 
of  less  consequence,  to  make  good  his  sayings 
with  his  fists  or  with  his  sword. 

[100] 


THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 


In  part,  his  explanation  of  himself  was 
straightforward  and  satisfactory.  What  he 
told  about  the  regiment  to  which  he  belonged 
was  known  to  be  true;  and  equally  known  to 
be  true  was  much  of  what  he  told — being  in 
accord  with  the  news  brought  thence  by  the 
latest  galleon — about  affairs  in  the  Filipinas. 
But  when  it  came  to  explaining  the  main 
matter — how  he  had  been  shifted  across  the 
ocean  and  the  earth,  and  all  in  a  single  moment, 
from  his  guard-mount  before  the  Governor's 
Palace  in  Manila  to  his  guard-mount  before 
the  Viceroy's  Palace  in  the  City  of  Mexico- 
Gil  Perez  was  at  a  stand.  How  that  strange 
thing  had  happened,  he  said,  he  knew  no  more 
than  Don  Luis  himself  knew.  All  that  he 
could  be  sure  of  was  that  it  had  happened: 
because,  certainly,  only  a  half  hour  earlier  he 
had  been  in  Manila ;  and  now,  just  as  certainly, 
he  was  in  the  City  of  Mexico — as  his  lordship 
the  Viceroy  could  see  plainly  with  his  own 
eyes.  As  to  the  even  greater  marvel — how 
he  knew  that  on  the  previous  evening  the 
Governor  of  the  Filipinas  had  had  his  head 
murderously  split  open,  and  was  dead  of  it, 
in  the  Molucca  Islands — he  said  quite  freely 

[xoi] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

that  he  did  not  in  the  least  know  how  he  knew 
it.  What  alone  he  could  be  sure  of,  he  said, 
was  that  in  his  heart  he  did  know  that  Don 
Gomez  had  keen  killed  on  the  previous  evening 
in  that  bad  manner;  and  he  very  stoutly 
asserted  that  the  truth  of  what  he  told  would 
be  clear  to  Don  Luis,  and  to  everybody,  when 
the  news  of  the  killing  of  Don  Gdmez  had  had 
time  to  get  to  Mexico  in  the  ordinary  way. 

And  then  Gil  P£rez — having  answered  all 
of  the  Viceroy's  questions  which  he  could 
answer,  and  having  said  all  that  he  had  to  say 
—stood  quite  at  his  ease  before  the  Viceroy: 
with  his  feet  firmly  planted,  and  his  right  hand 
on  his  hip,  and  his  right  arm  akimbo — and  so 
waited  for  whatever  might  happen  to  be  the 
next  turn. 

Well,  Senor,  the  one  thing  of  which  anybody 
really  could  be  sure  in  this  amazing  matter— 
and  of  which,  of  course,  everybody  was  sure— 
was  that  the  devil  was  at  both  the  bottom  and 
the  top  of  it ;  and,  also,  there  seemed  to  be  very 
good  ground  for  believing  that  Gil  Perez  was  in 
much  closer  touch  with  the  devil  than  any 
good  Christian — even  though  he  were  an  old 
soldier,  and  not  much  in  the  way  of  Chris- 

[102] 


THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 


tianity  expected  of  him — had  any  right  to  be. 
Therefore  the  Viceroy  rid  himself  of  an  affair 
that  was  much  the  same  to  him  as  a  basket  of 
nettles  by  turning  Gil  Perez  over  to  the  Holy 
Office  -  -  and  off  he  was  carried  to  Santo 
Domingo  and  clapped  into  one  of  the  strongest 
cells. 

Most  men,  of  course,  on  finding  themselves 
that  way  in  the  clutches  of  the  Inquisition, 
would  have  had  all  the  insides  of  them  filled 
with  terror;  but  Gil  Perez,  Sefior — being,  as  I 
have  mentioned,  an  old  campaigner — took  it 
all  as  it  came  along  to  him  and  was  not  one  bit 
disturbed.  He  said  cheerfully  that  many  times 
in  the  course  of  his  soldiering  he  had  been 
in  much  worse  places;  and  added  that — 
having  a  good  roof  over  his  head,  and  quite 
fair  rations,  and  instead  of  marching  and  fight- 
ing only  to  sit  at  his  ease  and  enjoy  himself 
—he  really  was  getting,  for  once  in  his  life, 
as  much  of  clear  comfort  as  any  old  soldier  had 
a  right  to  expect  would  come  his  way.  More- 
over, in  his  dealings  with  the  Familiars  of  the 
Holy  Office  his  conduct  was  exemplary.  He 
stuck  firmly  to  his  assertion  that — whatever 
the  devil  might  have  had  to  do  with  him — he 

[103] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

never  had  had  anything  to  do  with  the  devil; 
he  seemed  to  take  a  real  pleasure  in  confessing 
as  many  of  his  sins  as  he  conveniently  could 
remember;  and  in  every  way  that  was  open  to 
him  his  conduct  was  that  of  quite  as  good  a 
Christian  as  any  old  soldier  reasonably  could 
be  expected  to  be. 

Therefore — while  he  staid  on'  in  his  cell  very 
contentedly — the  Familiars  of  the  Holy  Office 
put  their  heads  together  and  puzzled  and 
puzzled  as  to  what  they  should  do  with  him: 
.because  it  certainly  seemed  as  though  the 
devil,  to  suit  his  own  devilish  purposes,  simply 
had  made  a  convenience  of  Gil  Perez  without 
getting  his  consent  in  the  matter;  and  so  it 
did  not  seem  quite  fair — in  the  face  of  his  pro- 
test that  he  was  as  much  annoyed  as  anybody 
was  by  what  the  devil  had  done  with  him — to 
put  him  into  a  flame-covered  sanbenito,  and 
to  march  him  off  to  be  burned  for  a  sorcerer  at 
the  next  auto  de  fe.  Therefore  the  Familiars 
of  the  Holy  Office  kept  on  putting  their  heads 
together  and  puzzling  and  puzzling  as  to  what 
they  should  do  with  him;  and  Gil  P£rez  kept 
on  enjoying  himself  in  his  cell  in  Santo  Domingo 
— and  so  the  months  went  on  and  on. 

[  104] 


THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 


And  then,  on  a  day,  a  new  turn  was  given 
to  the  whole  matter:  when  the  galleon  from 
the  Filipinas  arrived  at  Acapulco  and  brought 
with  it  the  proof  that  every  word  that  Gil 
Perez  had  spoken  was  true.  Because  the 
galleon  brought  the  news  that  Don  Gomez 
Perez  Dasmarinas  —  the  crew  of  the  ship  that 
he  was  on  having  mutinied  —  really  had  had 
his  head  murderously  split  open,  and  was 
dead  of  it,  in  the  Molucca  Islands;  and  that  this 
bad  happening  had  come  to  him  at  the  very 
time  that  Gil  P£rez  had  named.  Moreover, 
one  of  the  military  officers  who  had  come  from 
the  Filipinas  in  the  galleon,  and  up  from 
Acapulco  to  the  City  of  Mexico  with  the 
conducta,  recognized  Gil  Perez  the  moment 
that  he  laid  eyes  on  him;  and  this  officer  said 
that  he  had  seen  him — only  a  day  or  two 
before  the  galleon's  sailing — on  duty  in  Manila 
with  the  Palace  Guard.  And  so  the  fact  was 
settled  beyond  all  doubting  that  Gil  Perez  had 
been  brought  by  the  devil  from  Manila  to  the 
City  of  Mexico;  and,  also,  that  the  devil — 
since  only  the  devil  could  have  done  it — had 
put  the  knowledge  of  the  murderous  killing  of 
Don  Gdmez  into  his  heart.  Wherefore  the 

[105] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

fact  that  Gil  Perez  was  in  league  with  the  devil 
was  clear  to  all  the  world. 

Then  the  Familiars  of  the  Holy  Office  for  the 
last  time  put  their  heads  together  and  puzzled 
and  puzzled  over  the  matter;  and  at  the  end 
of  their  puzzling  they  decided  that  Gil  Perez 
was  an  innocent  person,  and  that  he  undoubt- 
edly had  had  criminal  relations  with  the  devil 
and  was  full  of  wickedness.  Therefore  they 
ordered  that,  being  innocent,  he  should  be  set 
free  from  his  cell  in  Santo  Domingo;  and  that, 
being  a  dangerous  character  whose  influence  was 
corrupting,  he  should  be  sent  back  to  Manila  in 
the  returning  galleon.  And  that  was  their  decree. 

Gil  Perez,  Senor,  took  that  disposition  of  him 
in  the  same  easy-going  way  that  he  had  taken 
all  the  other  dispositions  of  him:  save  that  he 
grumbled  a  little — as  was  to  be  expected  of  an 
old  soldier — over  having  to  leave  his  com- 
fortably idle  life  in  his  snug  quarters  and  to  go 
again  to  his  fightings  and  his  guard-mounts 
and  his  parades.  And  so  back  he  went  to  the 
Filipinas:  only  his  return  journey  was  made  in 
a  slow  and  natural  manner  aboard  the  galleon 
— not,  as  his  outward  journey  had  been  made, 
all  in  a  moment  on  devils'  wings. 

[106] 


. 


THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 


To  my  mind,  Senor,  it  seems  that  there  is 
more  of  this  story  that  ought  to  be  told.  For 
myself,  I  should  like  to  know  why  the  Familiars 
of  the  Holy  Office  did  not  deal  a  little  more 
severely  with  a  case  that  certainly  had  the 
devil  at  both  the  bottom  and  the  top  of  it; 
and,  also.  I  should  like  to  know  what  became 
of  Gil  Perez  when  he  got  back  to  Manila  in  the 
galleon — and  there  had  to  tell  over  again  about 
his  relations  with  the  devil  in  order  to  account 
for  his  half  year's  absence  from  duty  without 
leave.  But  those  are  matters  which  I  never 
have  heard  mentioned;  and  what  I  have  told 
you  is  all  that  there  is  to  tell. 


LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LOS  PARADOS 

TWO  dead  lovers,  Senor,  stand  always 
in  the  Calle  de  los  Parados,  one  at  each 
end  of  it ;  and  that  is  why — because  they  remain 
steadfastly  on  parade  there,  though  it  is  not 
everybody  who  happens  to  see  their  yellow 
skeletons  on  those  corners — the  street  of  the 
Parados  is  so  named. 

As  you  may  suppose,  Senor,  the  lovers  now 
being  dry  skeletons,  what  brought  them  there 
happened  some  time  ago.  Just  when  it  hap- 
pened, I  do  not  know  precisely ;  but  it  was  when 
an  excellent  gentleman,  who  was  an  officer  in 
the  Royal  Mint,  lived  in  the  fine  house  that 
is  in  the  middle  of  the  street  on  the  south  side 
of  it,  and  had  living  with  him  a  very  beauti- 
ful daughter  whose  hair  was  like  spun  gold. 
This  gentleman  was  named  Don  Jose*  de  Vallejo 
y  Hermosillo;  and  his  daughter  was  named 
(because  her  mother  was  of  the  noble  family  of 
Vezca)  Dona  Maria  Ysabel  de  Vallejo  y  Vezca; 

[108] 


i  !-•'• 

-3 — =**'—•  —  ;«-.— . — .— 


THE    CALLE    DE    LOS    PARADOS 

and  she  was  of  great  virtue  and  sweetness,  and 
was  twenty-two  years  old. 

All  the  young  men  of  the  City  sought  her  in 
marriage;  but  there  were  two  who  were  more 
than  any  of  the  others  in  earnest  about  it. 
One  of  these  was  Don  Francisco  Puerto  y 
Solis,  a  lieutenant  of  dragoons:  who  had  to 
offer  her  only  his  good  looks — he  was  a  very 
handsome  gentleman — and  the  hope  of  what 
he  might  get  for  himself  with  his  sword.  The 
other  one  was  the  Sefior  Don  Antonio  Miguel 
del  Cardonal,  Conde  de  Valdecebro — who  also 
was  a  handsome  gentleman,  and  who  owned 
mills  in  Puebla  of  the  Angels,  and  a  very  great 
hacienda,  and  was  so  rich  that  it  was  the  whole 
business  of  two  old  notaries  to  count  his  gold. 

And  these  two  posted  themselves  every  day 
in  the  street  in  which  was  Dona  Maria's  home 
—one  at  the  corner  of  the  Calle  del  Reloj,  the 
other  at  the  corner  of  the  Calle  de  Santa  Cat- 
arina — that  they  might  look  at  her  when  she 
came  forth  from  her  house ;  and  that  she  might 
see  them  waiting  to  get  sight  of  her,  and  so 
know  that  they  loved  her.  It  was  the  same 
custom  then,  Sefior,  as  it  is  to-day.  In  that 
way  all  of  our  polite  young  men  make  love. 

[  109] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

And  just  as  our  young  ladies  nowadays  wait 
and  wait  and  think  and  think  before  they 
make  their  hearts  up,  so  Dona  Maria  waited 
and  thought  then — and  the  time  slipped  on 
and  on,  and  neither  the  Lieutenant  nor  the 
Conde  knew  what  was  in  her  mind.  Then 
there  happened,  Senor,  a  very  dismal  thing. 
A  pestilence  fell  upon  the  City,  and  of  that 
pestilence  Dona  Maria  sickened  and  died.  But 
it  chanced  that  neither  of  her  lovers  was  on 
his  corner  when  they  took  her  out  from  her 
house  to  bury  her — you  see,  Senor,  even  lovers 
must  eat  and  sleep  sometimes,  and  they  could 
not  be  always  on  their  watch  for  her — and  in 
that  way  it  happened  that  neither  of  them 
knew  that  she  was  dead  and  gone.  Therefore 
they  kept  on  standing  on  their  parade  quite  as 
usual— coming  steadfastly  to  their  corners  day 
after  day,  and  month  after  month,  and  year 
after  year.  And  although,  after  a  while,  they 
died  too,  they  still  stood  at  their  posts — just  as 
though  they  and  Dona  Maria  still  were  alive. 
And  there,  on  their  corners,  they  have  remained 
until  this  very  day. 

It  is  told,  Senor,  that  once  in  broad  daylight 
half  the  City  saw  those  honest  waiting  skeletons. 

[no] 


HOME      OF      DONA       MARIA 


THE    CALLE    DE    LOS    PARADOS 

It  was  on  a  day  when  there  was  a  great  festival 
for  the  incoming  of  a  new  Viceroy,  and  they 
were  seen  by  the  crowd  that  waited  in  the 
atrium  of  the  church  of  Santa  Catarina  to  see 
the  procession  pass.  But  that  was  some 
hundreds  of  years  ago,  Senpr.  Now,  for  the 
most  part,  it  is  at  night  and  by  moonlight 
that  they  are  seen.  I  have  not  happened  to 
see  them  myself — but  then  I  do  not  often  go 
that  way. 


LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLE  DE  LA  JOYA 

WHAT  this  street  was  called,  in  very  old 
times,  Senor,  no  one  knows :  because  the 
dreadful  thing  that  gave  to  it  the  name  of  the 
Street  of  the  Jewel  happened  a  long,  long 
while  ago.  It  was  before  the  Independence. 
It  was  while  the  Viceroys  were  here  who  were 
sent  by  the  King  of  Spain. 

In  those  days  there  lived  in  this  fine  house 
at  the  corner  of  the  Calle  de  Mesones  and  what 
since  then  has  been  called  the  Calle  de  la  Joya 
—it  is  at  the  northwest  corner,  Senor,  and  a 
biscuit-bakery  is  on  the  lower  floor — a  very 
rich  Spanish  merchant:  who  was  named  Don 
Alonso  Fernandez  de  Bobadilla,  and  who  was 
a  tall  and  handsome  man,  and  gentle-man- 
nered, and  at  times  given  to  fits  of  rage.  He 
was  married  to  a  very  rich  and  a  very  beauti- 
ful lady,  who  was  named  Dona  Ysabel  de  la 
Garcide  y  Tovar;  and  she  was  the  daughter  of 
the  Conde  de  Torreleal.  This  lady  was  of  an 

[112] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    JOYA 

ardent  and  a  wilful  nature,  but  Don  Alonso 
loved  her  with  a  sincerity  and  humored  her  in 
all  her  whims  and  wants.  When  they  went 
abroad  together — always  in  a  grand  coach, 
with  servants  like  flies  around  them — the 
whole  City  stood  still  and  stared! 

Dona  Ysabel  was  not  worthy  of  her  hus- 
band's love:  and  so  he  was  told  one  day,  by 
whom  there  was  no  knowing,  in  a  letter  that 
was  thrown  from  the  street  into  the  room 
where  he  was  sitting,  on  the  ground  floor.  It 
was  his  office  of  affairs,  Senor.  It  is  one  of  the 
rooms  where  the  biscuits  are  baked  now.  In 
that  letter  he  was  bidden  to  watch  with  care 
his  wife's  doings  with  the  Licenciado  Don 
Jos6  Raul  de  Lara,  the  Fiscal  of  the  Inquisition 
—who  was  a  forlorn  little  man  (hombrecillo) 
not  at  all  deserving  of  any  lady's  love — and 
Don  Alonso  did  watch,  and  what  came  of  his 
watching  was  a  very  terrible  thing. 

He  pretended,  Senor,  that  he  had  an  im- 
portant affair  with  the  Viceroy  that  would 
keep  him  at  the  Palace  until  far  into  the  night ; 
and  so  went  his  way  from  his  home  in  the  early 
evening — but  went  no  farther  than  a  dozen 
paces  from  his  own  door.  There,  in  the  dark 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

street,  huddled  close  into  a  doorway,  his  cloak 
around  him — it  was  a  night  in  winter — he 
waited  in  the  creeping  cold.  After  a  time  along 
came  some  one — he  did  not  know  who,  but  it 
was  the  Licenciado — and  as  he  drew  near  to 
the  house  Dona  Ysabel  came  out  upon  her 
balcony,  and  between  them  there  passed  a  sign. 
Then,  in  a  little  while,  the  door  of  Don  Alonso's 
house  was  opened  softly  and  the  Licenciado  went 
in;  and  then,  softly,  the  door  was  shut  again. 
Presently,  Don  Alonso  also  went  in,  holding 
in  his  hand  his  dagger.  What  he  found — and 
it  made  him  so  angry  that  he  fell  into  one  of  his 
accustomed  fits  of  rage  over  it— was  the 
Licenciado  putting  on  the  wrist  of  his  wife  a 
rich  golden  bracelet.  When  they  saw  him, 
Senor,  their  faces  at  once  went  white — and 
their  faces  remained  white  always:  because 
Don  Alonso,  before  the  blood  could  come  back 
again,  had  killed  the  two  of  them  with  his 
dagger — and  they  were  white  in  death!  Then 
Don  Alonso  did  what  gave  to  this  street  the 
name  of  the  Street  of  the  Jewel.  From  Dona 
Ysabel's  wrist  he  wrenched  loose  the  bracelet, 
and  as  he  left  the  house  he  pinned  it  fast  with 
his  bloody  dagger  to  the  door. 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA   JOYA 

In  that  way  things  were  found  the  next 
morning  by  the  watch;  and  the  watch,  suspect- 
ing that  something  wrong  had  happened — 
because  to  see  a  bracelet  and  a  bloody  dagger 
in  such  a  place  was  unusual — called  the  Alcalde 
to  come  and  look  into  the  matter;  and  the 
Alcalde,  coming,  found  Dona  Ysabel  and  the 
Licenciado  lying  very  dead  upon  the  floor. 
So  the  street  was  called  the  Calle  de  la  Joya, 
and  that  is  its  name. 

Don  Alonso,  Senor,  was  worried  by  what  he 
had  done,  and  became  a  Dieguino — it  is  the 
strict  order  of  the  Franciscans.  They  go  bare- 
foot— and  it  was  in  the  convent  of  the  Diegu- 
inos,  over  there  at  the  western  end  of  the  Ala- 
meda,  that  he  ended  his  days. 


LEGEND    OF    THE    CALLE 
MACHINCUEPA 


DE    LA 


NATURALLY,  Senor,  this  matter  which 
gave  its  name  to  the  Calle  de  la  Machin- 
cuepa  created  a  scandal  that  set  all  the  tongues 
in  the  City  to  buzzing  about  it:  every  one,  of 
course,  blaming  the  young  lady — even  though 
she  did  it  to  win  such  vast  riches — for  com- 
mitting so  publicly  so  great  an  impropriety; 
but  some  holding  that  a  greater  blame  attached 
to  the  Marque's,  her  uncle,  for  punishing  her— 
no  matter  how  much  she  deserved  punishment 

—by  making  her  inheritance  depend  upon  so 
strange  and  so  outrageous  a  condition ;  and  some 
even  saying  that  the  greatest  blame  of  all  rested 
upon  the  Viceroy:  because  he  did  not  forbid  an 
indecorum  that  was  planned  to — and  that  did 

—take  place  in  the  Plaza,  Mayor  directly  in 
front  of  his  Palace,  and  so  beneath  his  very 
nose.  For  myself,  Senor,  I  think  that  the 
young  lady  deserved  more  blame  than  any- 
body: because  she  was  free  to  make  her  own 

[116] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    MACH1NCUEPA 

choice  in  the  matter,  and  that  she  chose  riches 
rather  than  propriety  very  clearly  proved— 
though  that,  to  be  sure,  was  known  before  she 
did  her  choosing — that  she  had  a  bad  heart. 
As  the  Viceroy  who  did  not  forbid  that  young 
lady  to  do  what  she  did  do  was  the  Duque 
de  Linares — who,  as  you  know,  Senor,  took 
up  the  duties  of  his  high  office  in  the  year 
1714 — you  will  perceive  that  the  curious  event 
about  which  I  now  am  telling  you  occurred 
very  nearly  two  full  centuries  ago. 

At  that  time  there  lived  in  the  street  that 
ever  since  that  time  has  been  called  the  Street 
of  the  Machincuepa  a  very  rich  and  a  very 
noble  Spanish  gentleman  whose  name  was  Don 
Mendo  Quiroga  y  Saurez,  and  whose  title  was 
Marques  del  Valle  Salado.  In  his  beginning  he 
was  neither  rich  nor  noble,  and  not  even  of 
good  blood:  having  been  begotten  by  an  un- 
known father  and  born  of  an  unknown  mother; 
and  having  in  his  young  manhood  gone  afloat 
out  of  Spain  as  a  common  sailor  to  seek  his 
fortune  on  the  sea.  What  he  did  upon  the 
sea  was  a  matter  that  his  teeth  guarded  his 
tongue  from  talking  about  in  his  later  years: 
but  it  was  known  generally  that — while  in 

[117] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

appearance  he  and  his  ship  had  been  engaged 
in  the  respectable  business  of  bringing  slaves 
from  Africa  to  the  colonies — his  real  business 
had  been  that  of  a  corsair;  and  that  on  his 
murdering  piracies  the  corner-stone  of  his  great 
fortune  had  been  laid. 

Having  in  that  objectionable  manner  ac- 
cumulated a  whole  ship-load  of  money,  and 
being  arrived  at  an  age  when  so  bustling  a  life 
was  distasteful  to  him,  he  came  to  Mexico; 
and,  being  come  here,  he  bought  with  his  ship- 
load of  money  the  Valle  Salado:  and  there  he 
set  up  great  salt-works  out  of  which  he  coined 
more  gold — knowing  well  how  to  grease  the 
palms  of  those  in  the  Government  who  could 
be  of  service  to  him — than  could  be  guessed  at 
even  in  a  dream.  Therefore  it  was  known  with 
certainty  that  he  possessed  a  fortune  of  pre- 
cisely three  millions  and  a  half  of  dollars — which 
is  a  greater  sum,  Senor,  than  a  hundred  men 
could  count  in  a  whole  month  of  summer  days. 
And  of  his  millions  he  sent  to  the  King  such 
magnificent  presents  that  the  King,  in  simple 
justice  to  him,  had  to  reward  him;  and  so  the 
King  made  him  a  marque's — and  he  was  the 
Marque's  del  Valle  Salado  from  that  time  on. 

[118] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    MACHINCUEPA 

Therefore — being  so  very  rich,  and  a  mar- 
quis— his  sea-murderings  of  his  younger  days, 
and  his  sea-stealings  that  made  the  corner-stone 
of  his  great  fortune,  were  the  very  last  things 
which  his  teeth  suffered  his  tongue  to  talk 
about :  and  he  lived  with  a  great  magnificence 
a  life  that  caused  much  scandal,  and  he  was 
generally  esteemed  and  respected,  and  because 
of  his  charities  he  was  beloved  by  all  the  poor. 

As  old  age  began  to  creep  upon  this  good 
gentleman,  Senor,  and  with  it  the  infirmities 
that  came  of  his  loose  way  of  living,  he  found 
himself  in  the  world  lonely:  because,  you  see 
—never  having  perceived  any  necessity  for 
marrying — he  had  no  wife  to  care  for  him,  nor 
children  whose  duty  it  was  to  minister  to  his 
needs.  Therefore — his  brother  in  Spain  about 
that  time  dying,  and  leaving  a  daughter  be- 
hind him — he  brought  from  Spain  his  dead 
brother's  daughter,  whom  he  put  at  the  head 
of  his  magnificent  household,  and  equally 
confided  himself  in  his  infirmity  to  her  care. 
And,  that  she  might  be  repaid  for  her  care  of 
him,  he  heaped  upon  her  every  possible  luxury 
and  splendor  that  his  great  riches  could 
procure. 

[119] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

The  name  of  this  young  lady,  Senor,  was 
Dona  Paz  de  Quiroga;  and  the  position  to 
which  she  was  raised  by  Don  Mendo's  munifi- 
cence— and  all  the  more  because  she  was 
raised  to  it  from  the  depths  of  poverty — was 
very  much  to  her  mind.  Dona  Paz  was  of 
a  great  beauty  that  well  became  the  rich  cloth- 
ing and  the  rich  jewels  that  her  uncle  lavished 
upon  her;  and  what  with  her  beauty,  and  her 
finery,  and  her  recognized  nobility  as  the  lawful 
inheritor  of  her  uncle's  title,  she  knew  herself 
to  be — and  made  no  bones  of  asserting  herself 
to  be — the  very  greatest  lady  at  the  Viceroy's 
court.  She  was  of  a  jealous  and  rancorous 
disposition,  and  very  charitable,  and  excessive- 
ly selfish,  and  her  pride  was  beyond  all  words. 
Every  one  of  the  young  men  in  the  City  im- 
mediately fell  in  love  with  her;  and  she  won 
also  the  respect  of  the  most  eminent  clerics 
and  the  homage  of  the  very  greatest  nobles 
of  the  court.  So  nice  was  her  sense  of  her  own 
dignity  that  even  in  the  privacy  of  her  own 
household  her  conduct  at  all  times  was  marked 
by  a  rigorous  elegance;  and  in  public  she 
carried  herself  with  a  grave  stateliness  that 
would  have  befitted  a  queen. 

[120] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    MACH1NCUEPA 

But  this  young  lady  had  a  bad  heart,  Senor, 
as  I  have  already  mentioned;  and  toward  Don 
Mendo,  to  whom  she  owed  everything,  she  did 
not  behave  well  at  all.  So  far  from  ministering 
to  him  in  his  infirmities,  she  left  him  wholly 
to  the  care  of  hired  servants;  when  she  made 
her  rare  visits  to  his  sick-room  she  carried 
always  a  scented  kerchief,  and  held  it  to  her 
nose  closely — telling  him  that  the  smell  of 
balsams  and  of  plasters  was  distasteful  to  her; 
and  never,  by  any  chance  whatever,  did  she 
give  him  one  single  kind  look  or  kind  word. 
As  was  most  natural,  Don  Mendo  did  not  like 
the  way  that  Dona  Paz  treated  him:  therefore, 
in  the  inside  of  him,  he  made  his  mind  up  that 
he  would  pay  her  for  it  in  the  end.  And  in  the 
end  he  did  pay  her  for  it:  as  she  found  out 
when,  on  a  day,  that  worthy  old  man  was 
called  to  go  to  heaven  and  they  came  to  read 
his  will. 

Dona  Paz  listened  to  the  reading  of  the  will 
with  the  greatest  satisfaction,  Senor,  until  the 
reading  got  to  the  very  end  of  it:  because  Don 
Mendo  uniformly  styled  her  his  beloved  niece 
—which  somewhat  surprised  her — and  in  plain 
words  directed  that  every  one  of  his  three 

[121] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

millions  and  a  half  of  dollars  should  be  hers. 
But  at  the  very  end  of  the  will  a  condition  was 
made  that  had  to  be  fulfilled  before  she  could 
touch  so  much  as  a  tlaco  of  her  great  in- 
heritance: and  that  condition  was  so  mon- 
strous— and  all  the  more  monstrous  because 
Dona  Paz  was  so  rigorously  elegant  in  all  her 
doings,  and  so  respectful  of  her  own  dignity— 
that  the  mere  naming  of  it  almost  suffocated 
her  with  fright  and  shame. 

And,  really,  Senor,  that  Dona  Paz  felt  that 
way  about  it  is  not  be  wondered  at,  because 
what  Don  Mendo  put  at  the  very  end  of  his 
will  was  this:  "So  to  Paz,  my  beloved  niece, 
I  leave  the  whole  of  my  possessions;  but  only 
in  case  that  she  comply  precisely  with  the  con- 
dition that  I  now  lay  upon  her.  And  the  con- 
dition that  I  now  lay  upon  her  is  this:  That, 
being  dressed  in  her  richest  ball  dress,  and 
wearing  her  most  magnificent  jewels,  she  shall 
go  in  an  open  coach  to  the  Plaza  Mayor  at 
noonday;  and  that,  being  come  to  the  Plaza 
Mayor,  she  shall  walk  to  the  very  middle  of  it ; 
and  that  there,  in  the  very  middle  of  it,  she 
shall  bow  her  head  to  the  ground;  and  that 
then,  so  bowing,  she  shall  make  the  turn  which 

[122] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    MACHINCUEPA 

among  the  common  people  of  Mexico  is  called 
a  '  machincuepa. '  And  it  is  my  will  that  if  my 
beloved  niece  Paz  does  not  comply  precisely 
with  this  condition,  within  six  months  from 
the  day  on  which  I  pass  out  of  life,  then  the 
whole  of  my  possessions  shall  be  divided  into 
two  equal  parts :  of  which  one  part  shall  belong 
to  the  Convent  of  Nuestra  Sefiora  de  la  Merced, 
and  the  other  part  shall  belong  to  the  Convent 
of  San  Francisco;  and  of  my  possessions  my 
beloved  niece  Paz  shall  have  no  part  at  all. 
And  this  condition  I  lay  upon  my  beloved 
niece  Paz  that,  in  the  bitterness  of  the  shame 
of  it,  she  may  taste  a  little  of  the  bitterness 
with  which  her  cruelties  have  rilled  my  dying 
years." 

Well,  Sefior,  you  may  fancy  the  state  that 
that  most  proud  and  most  dignified  young  lady 
was  in  when  she  knew  the  terms  on  which  alone 
her  riches  would  come  to  her !  And  as  to  mak- 
ing her  mind  up  in  such  a  case,  she  found  it 
quite  impossible.  On  the  one  side,  she  would 
say  to  herself  that  what  was  required  of  her  to 
win  her  inheritance  would  be  done,  and  done 
with,  in  no  more  than  a  moment;  and  that  then 
and  always — being  rich  beyond  dreaming,  and 

9  [I23] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXIC 

in  her  own  right  a  marquesa — she  would  be  the 
greatest  lady  in  the  whole  of  New  Spain.  And 
then,  on  the  other  side,  she  would  say  to  herself 
that  precisely  because  of  her  great  wealth  and 
her  title  she  would  be  all  the  more  sneered  at 
for  descending  to  an  act  so  scandalous ;  and  that 
if  she  did  descend  to  that  act  she  would  be 
known  as  the  Marquesa  de  la  Machincuepa  to 
the  end  of  her  days.  And  what  to  do,  Sefior, 
she  did  not  know  at  all.  And  as  time  went  on 
and  on,  and  she  did  not  do  anything,  the 
Mercedarios  and  the  Franciscanos — being  al- 
ways more  and  more  sure  that  they  would  share 
between  them  Don  Mendo's  great  fortune- 
talked  pleasantly  about  new  altars  in  their 
churches  and  new  comforts  in  their  con- 
vents: and  as  they  talked  they  rubbed  their 
hands. 

And  so  it  came  to  the  very  last  day  of  the 
six  months  that  Don  Mendo  had  given  to 
Dona  Paz  in  which  to  make  her  mind  up;  and 
the  morning  hours  of  that  day  went  slipping 
past,  and  of  Dona  Paz  the  crowds  that  filled 
the  streets  and  the  Plaza  Mayor  saw  nothing; 
and  the  Mercedarios  and  the  Franciscanos  all 
had  smiling  faces — being  at  last  entirely  certain 

["4] 


THE    CALLE    DE    LA    MACHINCUEPA 

that  Don  Mendo's  millions  of  dollars  would  be 
theirs. 

And  then,  Senor,  just  as  the  Palace  clock 
was  striking  the  half  hour  past  eleven,  the  great 
doors  of  Don  Mendo's  house  were  opened; 
and  out  through  the  doorway  came  an  open 
coach  in  which  Dona  Paz  was  seated,  dressed 
in  her  richest  ball  dress  and  wearing  the  most 
magnificent  of  her  jewels;  and  Dona  Paz, 
pale  as  a  dead  woman,  drove  through  the 
crowds  on  the  streets  and  into  the  crowd  on 
the  Plaza  Mayor;  and  then  she  walked,  the 
crowd  making  way  for  her,  to  the  very  middle 
of  it — where  her  servants  had  laid  a  rich  carpet 
for  her;  and  there,  as  the  Palace  clock  struck 
twelve — complying  precisely  with  Don  Mendo's 
condition — Dona  Paz  bowed  her  head  to  the 
ground;  and  then,  so  bowing,  she  made  the 
turn  which  among  the  common  people  of 
Mexico  is  called  a  machincuepa !  So  did  Dona 
Paz  win  for  herself  Don  Mendo's  millions  of 
dollars:  and  so  did  come  into  the  soul  of  her  the 
bitterness  of  shame  that  Don  Mendo  meant 
should  come  into  it — in  reward  for  the  bitter- 
ness with  which  her  cruelties  had  filled  his 
dying  years! 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

What  became  of  this  young  lady — who  so 
sacrificed  propriety  in  order  to  gain  riches— 
I  never  have  heard  mentioned :  but  it  is  certain 
that  the  street  in  which  she  lived  immediately 
got  the  name  of  the  Street  of  the  Machincuepa 
— and  the  exact  truth  of  every  detail  of  this 
curious  story  is  attested  by  the  fact  that  that 
is  its  name  now. 

Perhaps  the  meaning  of  this  word  machin- 
cuepa,  Senor — being,  as  Don  Mendo  said  in 
his  will,  a  word  in  use  among  the  common 
people  of  Mexico — is  unknown  to  you.  The 
meaning  of  it,  in  good  Spanish,  is  salto  mortal 
— only  it  means  more.  And  it  was  precisely 
that  sort  of  an  excessive  somersault — there 
in  the  middle  of  the  crowded  Plaza  Mayor  at 
noonday — that  the  most  proud  and  the  most 
dignified  Dona  Paz  turned! 


LEGEND  OF   THE   CALLE   DEL   PUENTE 
DEL    CUERVO 

AS  you  know,  Sefior,  in  the  street  that 
1\  is  called  the  Street  of  the  Bridge  of  the 
Raven,  there  nowadays  is  no  bridge  at  all; 
also,  the  house  is  gone  in  which  this  Don 
Rodrigo  de  Ballesteros  lived  with  his  raven  in 
the  days  when  he  was  alive.  As  to  the  raven, 
however,  matters  are  less  certain.  My  grand- 
father long  ago  told  me  that  more  than  once, 
on  nights  of  storm,  he  had  heard  that  evil  bird 
uttering  his  wicked  caws  at  midnight  between 
the  thunderclaps;  and  a  most  respectable  car- 
gador  of  my  acquaintance  has  given  me  his  word 
for  it  that  he  has  heard  those  cawings  too.  Yet 
if  they  still  go  on  it  must  be  the  raven's  spectre 
that  gives  voice  to  them ;  because,  Sefior,  while 
ravens  are  very  long-lived  birds,  it  is  improbable 
that  they  live — and  that  much  time  has  passed 
since  these  matters  happened — through  more 

than  the  whole  of  three  hundred  years. 

[127] 


LEGENDS   OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

This  Don  Rodrigo  in  his  youth,  Senor,  was 
a  Captain  of  Arcabuceros  in  the  Royal  Army; 
and,  it  seems,  he  fought  so  well  with  his  cross- 
bowmen  at  the  battle  of  San  Quintin  (what 
they  were  fighting  about  I  do  not  know)  that 
the  King  of  Spain  rewarded  him — when  the 
fighting  was  all  over  and  there  was  no  more 
need  for  his  services— by  making  him  a  royal 
commissioner  here  in  Mexico:  that  he  might 
get  rich  comfortably  in  his  declining  years. 
It  was  the  Encomienda  of  Atzcapotzalco  that 
the  King  gave  to  him;  and  in  those  days 
Atzcapotzalco  was  a  very  rich  place,  quite 
away  from  the  City  westward,  and  yielded  a 
great  revenue  for  Don  Rodrigo  to  have  the 
fingering  of.  Nowadays,  as  you  know,  Senor, 
it  is  almost  a  part  of  the  City,  because  you  get 
to  it  in  the  electric  cars  so  quickly;  and  it  has 
lost  its  good  fortune  and  is  but  a  dreary  little 
threadbare  town. 

It  was  with  the  moneys  which  stuck  to  his 
fingers  from  his  collectorship — just  as  the 
King  meant  that  they  should  stick,  in  reward 
for  his  good  fighting — that  Don  Rodrigo  built 
for  himself  his  fine  house  in  the  street  that  is 

now  called,  because  of  the  bridge  that  once 

[128] 


THE  CALLE  DEL  PUENTE  DEL  CUERVO 

was  a  part  of  it,  and  because  of  the  raven's 
doings,  the  Puente  del  Cuervo.  If  that  street 
had  another  name,  earlier,  Senor,  I  do  not 
know  what  it  was. 

This  Don  Rodrigo,  as  was  generally  known, 
was  a  very  wicked  person;  and  therefore  he 
lived  in  his  fine  house,  along  with  his  raven,  in 
great  magnificence — eating  always  from  dishes 
of  solid  silver,  and  being  served  by  pages  wear- 
ing clothes  embroidered  with  gold.  But,  for 
all  his  riches,  he  himself  was  clad  as  though  he 
were  a  beggar — and  a  very  dirty  beggar  at  that. 
Over  his  jerkin  and  breeches  he  wore  a  long 
capellar  that  wrapped  him  from  his  neck  to 
his  heels  loosely;  and  this  capellar  had  been 
worn  by  him  through  so  many  years  that  it 
was  shabby  beyond  all  respectability,  and 
stained  with  stains  of  all  colors,  and  everywhere 
greasy  and  soiled.  Yet  on  the  front  of  it, 
upon  his  breast,  he  wore  the  Cross  of  Santiago 
that  the  King  had  given  him;  and  wearing 
that  cross,  as  you  know,  Senor,  made  him  as 
much  of  a  caballero  as  the  very  best.  In  vari- 
ous other  ways  the  evil  that  was  in  him  showed 
itself.  He  never  went  to  mass,  and  he  made 
fun  openly  of  all  holy  things.  The  suspicion 

[129] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF     MEXICO 

was  entertained  by  many  people  that  he  had 
intimacies  with  heretics.  Such  conduct  gives 
a  man  a  very  bad  name  now;  but  it  gave  a  man 
a  worse  name  then — and  so  he  was  known 
generally  as  the  Excommunicate,  which  was 
the  very  worst  name  that  anybody  could  have. 

As  to  the  raven,  Senor,  Don  Rodrigo  him- 
self named  it  El  Diablo;  and  that  it  truly  was 
the  devil — or,  at  least,  that  it  was  a  devil — no 
one  ever  doubted  at  all.  The  conduct  of  that 
reprobate  bird  was  most  offensive.  It  would 
soil  the  rich  furnishings  of  the  house;  it  would 
tear 'with  its  beak  the  embroidered  coverings 
of  the  chairs  and  the  silken  tapestries;  it 
would  throw  down  and  shatter  valuable  pieces 
of  glass  and  porcelain;  there  was  no  end 
to  its  misdeeds.  But  when  Don  Rodrigo 
stormed  at  his  servants  about  these  wreckings 
— and  he  was  a  most  violent  man,  Senor,  and 
used  tempestuous  language — the  servants  had 
only  to  tell  him  that  the  raven  was  the  guilty 
one  to  pacify  him  instantly.  "  If  it  is  the 
work,  of  the  Devil/'  he  would  say  without 
anger,  "it  is  well  done!1' — and  so  the  matter 
would  pass. 

Suddenly,  on  a  day,  both  Don  Rodrigo  and 


. 


THE  CALLE  DEL  PUENTE  DEL  CUERVO 

the  raven  disappeared.  Their  going,  in  that 
strange  and  sudden  way,  made  a  great  com- 
motion; but  there  was  a  greater  commotion 
when  the  Alcalde — being  called  to  look  into 
the  matter — entered  the  house  to  search  it  and 
found  a  very  horrible  thing.  In  the  room  that 
had  been  Don  Rodrigo's  bedroom,  lying  dis- 
honored upon  the  floor,  broken  and  blood- 
spattered,  was  the  most  holy  image;  and  all 
about  it  were  lying  raven  feathers,  and  they 
also  were  spattered  with  blood.  Therefore  it 
was  known  that  the  raven-devil  and  Don 
Rodrigo  had  beaten  the  holy  image  and  had 
drawn  blood  from  it;  and  that  the  great  devil, 
the  master  of  both  of  them,  in  penalty  for  their 
dreadful  act  of  sacrilege,  had  snatched  them 
suddenly  home  to  him  to  burn  forever  in  hell. 
That  was  the  very  proper  end  of  them.  Never 
were  they  seen  again  either  on  sea  or  land. 

Naturally,  Senor,  respectable  people  de- 
clined to  live  in  a  house  where  there  had  been 
such  shocking  doings.  Even  the  people  living 
in  the  adjoining  houses,  feeling  the  disgrace 
that  was  on  the  neighborhood,  moved  away 
from  them.  And  so,  slowly,  as  the  years  went 
on,  all  of  those  houses  crumbled  to  pieces  and 

[131] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

fell  into  ruins  which  were  carted  away — and 
that  is  why  they  no  longer  are  there.  But  it 
is  generally  known,  Senor;  that  until  Don 
Rodrigo's  house  did  in  that  way  go  out  of 
existence,  Don  Rodrigo  continued  to  inhabit  it; 
and  that  the  raven  continued  to  bear  him 
company. 

Just  a  year  from  the  time  that  the  devil  had 
snatched  away  to  hell  the  two  of  them — and 
it  was  at  midnight,  and  a  storm  was  upon  the 
City — the  neighbors  heard  between  the  thunder- 
claps the  clock  on  the  Palace  striking  its  twelve 
strokes;  and  then,  between  the  next  thunder- 
claps, they  heard  the  raven  caw  twelve  times. 
Then  it  became  known  that  the  raven  nightly 
took  up  its  post  on  the  parapet  of  the  bridge 
that  was  in  that  street;  and  that,  when  his 
cawing  for  midnight  was  ended,  he  habitually 
flew  up  into  the  balcony  of  Don  Rodrigo's 
house;  and  that  on  the  balcony  he  found  Don 
Rodrigo — a  yellow  skeleton,  and  over  the 
bones  of  it  the  dirty  old  capellar — ready  and 
waiting  for  him.  Don  Rodrigo's  skeleton 
would  be  sitting  quite  at  its  ease  on  the 
balcony;  on  the  railing  of  the  balcony  would 
be  perched  the  raven;  and  with  his  dry-bone 


THE  CALLE  DEL  PUENTE  DEL  CUERVO 

fingers — making  a  little  clicking  sound,  like 
that  of  castanets — Don  Rodrigo  would  stroke 
gently  the  back  of  that  intensely  wicked  bird. 
All  this  would  show  for  a  moment  while  the 
lightning  was  flashing;  then  darkness  would 
come,  and  a  crash  of  thunder;  and  after  the 
thunder,  in  the  black  silence,  the  little  clicking 
sound  of  Don  Rodrigo 's  dry-bone  fingers  strok- 
ing the  raven's  back  gently  again  would  be 
heard. 

And  so  it  all  went  on,  Senor,  my  grandfather 
told  me,  until  the  house  tumbled  down  with  age, 
and  these  disagreeable  horrors  no  longer  were 
possible;  and  it  is  most  reasonably  evident — 
since  the  street  got  its  name  because  of  them — 
that  they  really  must  have  happened,  and  that 
they  must  have  continued  for  a  very  long 
time. 

As  I  have  mentioned,  Senor,  my  friend  the 
cargador — who  is  a  most  respectable  and  truth- 
ful person — declares  that  sometimes  on  stormy 
nights  he  himself  has  heard  the  raven's  cawings 
when  the  Palace  clock  has  finished  its  twelve 
strokes ;  and  from  that  it  would  appear  that  the 
raven  is  to  be  met  with  in  the  Puente  del 
Cuervo  even  now. 

[133] 


LEGEND    OF    LA    LLORONA1 

AS  is  generally  known,  Senor,  many  bad  things 
j[\  are  met  with  by  night  in  the  streets  of 
the  City;  but  this  Wailing  Woman,  La  Llorona, 
is  the  very  worst  of  them  all.  She  is  worse  by 
far  than  the  vaca  de  lumbre — that  at  midnight 
comes  forth  from  the  potrero  of  San  Pablo  and 
goes  galloping  through  the  streets  like  a  blazing 
whirlwind,  breathing  forth  from  her  nostrils 
smoke  and  sparks  and  flames:  because  the 
Fiery  Cow,  Senor,  while  a  dangerous  animal  to 
look  at,  really  does  no  harm  whatever — and 
La  Llorona  is  as  harmful  as  she  can  be ! 

Seeing  her  walking  quietly  along  the  quiet 
street — at  the  times  when  she  is  not  running, 
and  shrieking  for  her  lost  children — she  seems 
a  respectable  person,  v only  odd  looking  because 
of  her  white  petticoat  and  the  white  reboso 
with  which  her  head  is  covered,  and  anybody 

1  See  Note  IX. 


LEGEND    OF    LA    LLORONA 

might  speak  to  her.     But  whoever  does  speak 
to  her,  in  that  very  same  moment  dies! 

The  beginning  of  her  was  so  long  ago  that  no 
one  knows  when  was  the  beginning  of  her;  nor 
does  any  one  know  anything  about  her  at  all. 
But  it  is  known  certainly  that  at  the  beginning 
of  her,  when  she  was  a  living  woman,  she  com- 
mitted bad  sins.  As  soon  as  ever  a  child  was 
born  to  her  she  would  throw  it  into  one  of  the 
canals  which  surround  the  City,  and  so  would 
drown  it;  and  she  had  a  great  many  children, 
and  this  practice  in  regard  to  them  she  con- 
tinued for  a  long  time.  At  last  her  conscience 
began  to  prick  her  about  what  she  did  with  her 
children;  but  whether  it  was  that  the  priest 
spoke  to  her,  or  that  some  of  the  saints  cau- 
tioned her  in  the  matter,  no  one  knows.  But 
it  is  certain  that  because  of  her  sinnings  she 
began  to  go  through  the  streets  in  the  darkness 
weeping  and  wailing.  And  presently  it  was 
said  that  from  night  till  morning  there  was  a 
wailing  woman  in  the  streets;  and  to  see  her, 
being  in  terror  of  her,  many  people  went  forth 
at  midnight ;  but  none  did  see  her,  because  she 
could  be  seen  only  when  the  street  was  deserted 
and  she  was  alone. 

[135] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF     MEXICO 

Sometimes  she  would  come  to  a  sleeping 
watchman,  and  would  waken  him  by  asking: 
"What  time  is  it?"  And  he  would  see  a 
woman  clad  in  white  standing  beside  him  with 
her  reboso  drawn  over  her  face.  And  he  would 
answer:  "It  is  twelve  hours  of  the  night." 
And  she  would  say:  "At  twelve  hours  of  this 
day  I  must  be  in  Guadalajara!" — or  it  might 
be  in  San  Luis  Potosi,  or  in  some  other  far- 
distant  city — and,  so  speaking,  she  would 
shriek  bitterly:  "Where  shall  I  find  my 
children?" — and  would  vanish  instantly  and 
utterly  away.  And  the  watchman  would  feel 
as  though  all  his  senses  had  gone  from  him, 
and  would  become  as  a  dead  man.  This  hap- 
pened many  times  to  many  watchmen,  who 
made  report  of  it  to  their  officers;  but  their 
officers  would  not  believe  what  they  told.  But 
it  happened,  on  a  night,  that  an  officer  of  the 
watch  was  passing  by  the  lonely  street  beside 
the  church  of  Santa  Anita.  And  there  he 
met  with  a  woman  wearing  a  white  reboso  and 
a  white  petticoat ;  and  to  her  he  began  to  make 
love.  He  urged  her,  saying:  "Throw  off  your 
reboso  that  I  may  see  your  pretty  face!" 
And  suddenly  she  uncovered  her  face — and 

[136] 


LEGEND    OF    LA    LLORONA 

what  he  beheld  was  a  bare  grinning  skull  set 
fast  to  the  bare  bones  of  a  skeleton!  And 
while  he  looked  at  her,  being  in  horror,  there 
came  from  her  fleshless  jaws  an  icy  breath;  and 
the  iciness  of  it  froze  the  very  heart's  blood 
in  him,  and  he  fell  to  the  earth  heavily  in  a 
deathly  swoon.  When  his  senses  came  back 
to  him  he  was  greatly  troubled.  In  fear  he 
returned  to  the  Diputacion,  and  there  told 
what  had  befallen  him.  And  in  a  little  while 
his  life  forsook  him  and  he  died. 

What  is  most  wonderful  about  this  Wailing 
Woman,  Senor,  is  that  she  is  seen  in  the  same 
moment  by  different  people  in  places  widely 
apart:  one  seeing  her  hurrying  across  the 
atrium  of  the  Cathedral;  another  beside  the 
Arcos  de  San  Cosme;  and  yet  another  near  the 
Salto  del  Agua,  over  by  the  prison  of  Belen. 
More  than  that,  in  one  single  night  she  will  be 
seen  in  Monterey  and  in  Oaxaca  and  in  Acapulco 
—the  whole  width  and  length  of  the  land  apart 
—and  whoever  speaks  with  her  in  those  far 
cities,  as  here  in  Mexico,  immediately  dies  in 
fright.  Also,  she  is  seen  at  times  in  the  country. 
Once  some  travellers  coming  along  a  lonely 
road  met  with  her,  and  asked:  "  Where  go  you 

[137] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEX1C 

on  this  lonely  road  ?"  And  for  answer  she  cried : 
"Where  shall  I  find  my  children?"  and,  shriek- 
ing, disappeared.  And  one  of  the  travellers 
went  mad.  Being  come  here  to  the  City  they 
told  what  they  had  seen;  and  were  told  that 
this  same  Wailing  Woman  had  maddened  or 
killed  many  people  here  also. 

Because  the  Wailing  Woman  is  so  generally 
known,  Sefior,  and  so  greatly  feared,  few 
people  now  stop  her  when  they  meet  with  her 
to  speak  with  her — therefore  few  now  die  of 
her,  and  that  is  fortunate.  But  her  loud  keen 
waitings,  and  the  sound  of  her  running  feet, 
are  heard  often;  and  especially  in  nights  of 
storm.  I  myself,  Senor,  have  heard  the  run- 
ning of  her  feet  and  her  wailings;  but  I  never 
have  seen  her.  God  forbid  that  I  ever  shall ! 


NOTES 


NOTE  I 
LEGEND  OF  DON  JUAN  MANUEL 

DON  JUAN  MANUEL  was  a  real  person:  who  lived 
stately  in  a  great  house,  still  standing,  in  the  street 
that  in  his  time  was  called  the  Calle  Nueva,  and  that 
since  his  time  has  borne  his  name;  who  certainly  did 
murder  one  man — in  that  house,  not  in  the  street — 
at  about,  probably,  eleven  o'clock  at  night;  and  who 
certainly  was  found  hanging  dead  on  the  gallows  in 
front  of  the  Capilla  de  la  Espiracion,  of  an  October 
morning  in  the  year  1641,  without  any  explanation 
ever  being  forthcoming  of  how  he  got  there.  What 
survive  of  the  tangled  curious  facts  on  which  the 
fancies  of  this  legend  rest  have  been  collected  by 
Senor  Obregdn,  and  here  are  summarized. 

Don  Juan  Manuel  de  Sol6rzano,  a  native  of  Burgos, 
a  man  of  rank  and  wealth,  in  the  year  1623  came  in 
the  train  of  the  Viceroy  the  Marque's  de  Guadalcclzar  to 
Mexico;  where  for  a  long  while  he  seems  to  have  led  a 
life  prosperous  and  respectable.  In  the  year  1636  he 
increased  his  fortune  by  making  an  excellent  marriage 
—with  Dona  Mariana  de  Laguna,  the  daughter  of  a 
rich  mine-owner  of  Zacatecas.  His  troubles  had  their 
beginning  in  an  intimate  friendship  that  he  formed  with 
the  Viceroy  (1635-1640)  the  Marque's  de  Cadereita;  a 
'  [141] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXIC 

friendship  of  so  practical  a  sort  on  the  side  of  the 
Viceroy  as  to  cause  remonstrance  to  be  made  in  Spain 
against  his  excessive  bestowal  of  official  favors  on  his 
favorite.  Moreover,  "  the  evil  speaking  of  the  curious  " 
was  excited  by  the  fact  that  Don  Juan  and  his  wife 
spent  a  great  part  of  their  time  at  the  Palace  in  the 
Viceroy's  company. 

Matters  were  brought  to  a  crisis  by  Don  Juan's 
appointment  as  Administrator  of  the  Royal  Hacienda; 
an  office  that  gave  him  control  of  the  great  revenues 
derived  from  the  fleets  which  plied  annually  between 
Mexico  and  Spain.  The  conduct  of  this  very  lucrative 
administration  previously  had  been  with  the  Audiencia ; 
and  by  the  members  of  that  body  vigorous  protest  was 
made  against  the  Viceroy's  action  in  enriching  his 
favorite  at  their  cost.  "Odious  gossip"  was  aroused; 
threats  were  made  of  a  popular  uprising;  an  appeal — 
duly  freighted  with  bribes  to  assure  its  arrival  at  the 
throne — was  made  to  the  King.  "  But  the  springs  put 
in  force  by  the  Viceroy  must  have  been  very  powerful 
— more  powerful  than  the  money  sent  by  the  Audiencia 
— since  Philip  IV.  confirmed  Don  Juan  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  his  concession." 

While  the  case  thus  rested,  an  incidental  scandal 
was  introduced  into  it.  By  the  fleet  from  Spain  came 
one  Dona  Ana  Porcel  de  Velasco:  a  lady  of  good  birth, 
very  beautiful,  the  widow  of  a  naval  officer,  reduced 
by  her  widowhood  and  by  other  misfortunes  to  poverty. 
In  her  happier  days  she  had  been  a  beauty  at  Court, 
and  there  the  Marques  de  Cadereita  had  known  her 
and  had  made  suit  to  her;  wherefore  she  had  come  to 
Mexico  to  seek  his  Viceregal  protection.  Housing  her 
in  the  Palace  being  out  of  the  question,  the  Viceroy 

[142] 


HOUSE   OF   DON   JUAN   MANUEL 


NOTES 


begged  that  Don  Juan  would  take  her  into  his  own 
home:  and  that  disposition  of  her,  accordingly,  was 
made — with  the  result  that  more  "odious  gossip"  was 
aroused.  What  became  of  the  beautiful  Dona  Ana  is 
unrecorded.  Her  episodic  existence  in  the  story  seems 
to  be  due  to  the  fact  that  because  of  her  the  popular 
ill-will  against  Don  Juan  and  against  the  Viceroy  was 
increased. 

A  far-reaching  ripple  from  the  wave  of  the  Portuguese 
and  Catalonian  revolt  of  the  year  1640,  influencing 
affairs  in  Mexico,  gave  opportunity  for  this  ill-will  to 
crystallize  into  action  of  so  effective  a  sort  that  the 
Viceroy  was  recalled,  and  his  favorite — no  longer  under 
protection — was  cast  into  prison.  Don  Juan's  com- 
mitment— the  specific  charge  against  him  is  not  re- 
corded— was  signed  by  one  Don  Francisco  Velez  de 
Pereira:  who,  as  Sefior  Obregon  puts  it,  "was  not  only 
a  Judge  of  the  criminal  court  but  a  criminal  Judge " 
(no  era  solamente  un  Alcalde  del  crimen  sino  un  Alcalde 
criminal]  because  he  made  dishonest  proposals  to 
Dona  Mariana  as  the  price  of  her  husband's  liberation. 
It  would  seem  that  Dona  Mariana  accepted  the  of- 
fered terms;  and  in  so  grateful  a  spirit  that  she  was 
content  to  wait  upon  the  Alcalde's  pleasure  for  their 
complete  ratification  by  Don  Juan's  deliverance. 
Pending  such  liquidation  of  the  contract,  news  was 
carried  to  Don  Juan  in  prison  of  the  irregular  negotia- 
tions in  progress  to  procure  his  freedom:  whereupon 
he  procured  it  for  himself,  one  night,  by  breaking  jail. 
Going  straight  to  his  own  home,  he  found  there  the 
Alcalde — and  incontinently  killed  him. 

That  one  killing  that  Don  Juan  Manuel  certainly 
did  commit — out  of  which,  probably,  has  come  the 

[143] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

legend  of  his  many  murders — created,  because  of  the 
high  estate  of  all  concerned  in  it,  a  deplorable  scandal: 
that  the  Audiencia — while  resolved  to  bring  Don  Juan 
to  justice — sought  to  allay  by  hushing  up,  so  far  as  was 
possible,  the  whole  affair.  The  Duque  de  Escalona,  the 
new  Viceroy  (i  640-1 642) ,  was  at  one  with  the  Audiencia 
in  its  hushing-up  policy;  but  was  determined  —  for 
reasons  of  his  own  which  are  unrecorded — that  Don 
Juan  should  not  be  executed.  So,  for  a  considerable 
period  of  time,  during  which  Don  Juan  remained  in 
prison,  the  matter  rested.  The  event  seems  to  imply 
that  the  Audiencia  accomplished  its  stern  purpose,  as 
opposed  to  the  lenient  purpose  of  the  Viceroy,  by  means 
as  informal  as  they  were  effective.  Certainly,  on  a 
morning  in  October,  1641,  precisely  as  described  in  the 
legend,  Don  Juan  Manuel  was  found  hanging  dead  on 
the  gallows  in  front  of  the  Capilla  de  la  Espiraci6n. 
Senor  Obreg6n  concludes  the  historical  portion  of  his 
narrative  in  these  words:  "  The  Oidores,  whose  orders 
it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  brought  about  that  dark 
deed,  attributed  it  to  the  angels — but  there  history 
ends  and  legend  begins." 

Somewhere  in  the  course  of  my  readings — I  cannot 
remember  where — I  have  come  upon  the  seriously 
made  suggestion  that  Don  Juan  Manuel  practically 
was  a  bravo:  that  the  favors  which  he  received  from 
the  Viceroy  were  his  payment  for  putting  politically 
obnoxious  persons  out  of  the  way.  This  specious  ex- 
planation does  account  for  his  traditional  many  mur- 
ders, but  is  not  in  accord  with  probability.  Aside 
from  the  fact  that  bravos  rarely  are  men  of  rank  and 
wealth,  a  series  of  murders  traceable  to  political  mo- 
tives during  the  Viceregal  term  of  the  Marque's  de 

[144] 


DOORWAY.  HOUSE   OF   DON   JUAN   MANUEL 


NOTES 


Cadereita — whose  many  enemies  keenly  were  alive 
to  his  misdoings — almost  certainly  would  be  found, 
but  is  not  found,  recorded  in  the  chronicles  of  his  time. 
Such  omission  effectively  puts  this  picturesque  ex- 
planation of  Don  Juan's  doings  out  of  court. 


NOTE  II 
LEGEND  OF  THE  ALTAR  DEL  PERDON 

SIMON  PEYRENS,  a  Flemish  painter,  came  to  Mexico 
in  the  suite  of  the  third  Viceroy  (1566-1568)  Don 
Gaston  de  Peralta,  Marque's  de  Fakes.  If  he  painted 
—and,  presumably,  he  did  paint — a  Virgin  of  Mercy 
for  the  Altar  del  Perdon,  his  picture  has  disappeared: 
doubtless  having  been  removed  from  the  altar  when  the 
present  Cathedral  (begun,  1573 ;  dedicated,  though  then 
incomplete,  1656)  replaced  the  primitive  structure 
erected  a  few  years  after  the  Conquest.  The  Virgin 
of  the  Candelaria  on  the  existing  Altar  del  Perdon  was 
painted  by  Baltasar  de  Echave,  the  Elder;  a  Spanish 
artist  of  eminence  who  came  to  Mexico  about  the  end 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  Peyrens  certainly  had  the 
opportunity  to  do  his  work  under  conditions  akin  to, 
but  decidedly  more  unpleasant  than,  those  set  forth 
in  the  legend :  as  Senor  Obregon  has  made  clear  by  pro- 
ducing facts  which  exhibit  the  afflictions  of  that  un- 
fortunate artist;  and  which  also,  incidentally,  account 
for  the  appearance  in  Mexico  of  a  miracle-story  that  in 
varying  forms  is  found  in  the  saintly  chronicles  of 
many  lands. 

Senor  Obregon 's  source  is  an  original  document  of 
[145] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

the  time  of  Fray  Alonso  de  Montufar;  a  Dominican 
brother  who  was  the  second  Archbishop  of  Mexico 
(1554-1572),  and  who  also  held  the  office  of  Inquisitor — 
in  accordance  with  the  custom  that  obtained  until 
the  formal  establishment  (1571)  of  the  Inquisition  in 
Mexico.  It  was  before  him,  therefore,  as  represented 
by  his  Provisor,  that  the  case  of  Peyrens  was  brought. 

As  stated  in  this  document,  Peyrens  had  declared  in 
familiar  talk  with  friends  that  simple  incontinence  was 
not  a  sin;  and  he  farther  had  declared  that  he  liked  to 
paint  portraits,  and  that  he  did  not  like  to,  and  would 
not,  paint  saints  nor  pictures  of  a  devotional  sort. 
His  friends  admonished  him  that  his  views  in  regard  to 
incontinence  made  him  liable  to  arraignment  before  the 
ecclesiastical  authorities;  whereupon — seemingly  seek- 
ing, as  a  measure  of  prudence,  to  forestall  by  his  own 
confession  any  charge  that  might  be  brought  against 
him — he  "denounced  himself,"  on  September  10, 
1568,  to  Fray  Bartolome'  de  Ledesma,  Gobernador  de  la 
Mitra.  As  the  result  of  his  confession — instead  of 
being  granted  the  absolution  that  he  obviously  ex- 
pected to  receive — he  was  arrested  and  cast  into  prison. 

Four  days  later,  September  i4th,  he  was  examined 
formally.  To  the  questions  propounded  to  him,  he 
replied,  in  substance:  That  he  had  been  born  in  Ant- 
werp, the  son  of  Fero  Peyrens  and  of  Constanza  Lira 
his  wife ;  that  he  was  not  of  Jewish  descent ;  that  none 
of  his  family  had  been  dealt  with  by  the  Inquisition; 
that  in  his  early  manhood  he  had  gone  to  Lisbon  and 
later  to  Toledo,  where  the  Court  then  was  seated,  to 
practice  his  profession  as  a  painter;  that  he  had  come 
to  New  Spain,  in  the  suite  of  the  Viceroy,  in  the  hope 
of  bettering  his  fortunes.  In  regard  to  the  charges 

[146] 


NOTES 


against  him,  he  explained:  That  what  he  had  said  about 
the  sinlessness  of  simple  incontinence  had  been  spoken 
lightty  in  friendly  talk,  and,  moreover,  very  well  might 
have  been  misunderstood  because  of  his  imperfect 
knowledge  of  the  Spanish  tongue;  and  that  what  he 
had  said  about  liking  to  paint  portraits  and  not  being 
willing  to  paint  saints  had  been  said  only  because 
portrait-painting  was  the  better  paid.  His  trial  follow- 
ed :  at  which  nothing  more  was  produced  against  him 
— although  a  number  of  witnesses,  including  "many 
painters,"  were  interrogated — than  the  facts  brought 
out  in  his  own  examination. 

In  order  to  force  from  Peyrens  himself  a  fuller  and 
more  incriminating  confession,  the  Pro  visor,  Don 
Este'ban  de  Portillo,  ordered  that  he  should  be  "sub- 
mitted to  the  test  of  torture."  This  test  was  applied  on 
December  ist — when  Peyrens  "supported  three  turns 
of  the  rack  and  swallowed  three  jars  of  water  dripped 
into  his  mouth  by  a  linen  rag,"  without  modifying  or 
enlarging  his  previous  declarations.  By  the  rules  of 
the  game — he  having,  in  the  jargon  of  the  Inquisition, 
"conquered  his  torment" — the  proceedings  against 
him  then  should  have  ended.  Mr.  Lea,  commenting 
on  his  case  ("The  Inquisition  in  the  Spanish  De- 
pendencies," p.  198),  writes:  "This  ought  to  have 
earned  his  dismissal,  but  on  December  4th  he  was 
condemned  to  pay  the  costs  of  his  trial  and  to  give 
security  that  he  would  not  leave  the  City  until  he  should 
have  painted  a  picture  of  Our  Lady  of  Merced,  as  an 
altar-piece  for  the  church.  He  complied,  and  it  was 
duly  hung  in  the  Cathedral." 

I  have  not  found — seemingly,  Mr.  Lea  did  find — a 
record  of  the  actual  painting  of  the  picture:  The 

[147] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF     MEXICO 

sentence  passed  on  Peyrens  is  given  in  full  by  Senor 
Obregon — in  archaic  Spanish,  whereof  much  of  the 
queer  flavor  evaporates  in  translation — and  is  as 
follows : 

"  In  the  criminal  plea  now  pending  before  me,  pre- 
ferred by  the  Holy  Office  against  simon  peireins  fleming 
held  in  the  prison  of  this  Arcobispado  in  regard  to  the 
words  which  the  said  simon  peireins  spoke  and  on 
which  he  has  been  prosecuted,  on  the  acts  and  merits 
of  this  case  it  is  found  that  for  the  crime  committed 
by  simon  peyrens  using  him  with  equity  and  mercy 
I  condemn  him  to  paint  at  his  own  cost  an  altar-piece 
(retablo)  of  our  lady  of  mercy  for  this  holy  church  [the 
Cathedral]  very  devout  and  to  me  pleasing,  and  that 
in  the  interim  while  he  is  painting  this  altar-piece  he 
shall  not  leave  this  city  under  penalty  of  being  punished 
with  all  rigor  as  one  disobedient  to  the  mandates  of 
the  holy  office,  and  I  admonish  and  command  the  said 
simon  peireins  that  from  this  time  forth  he  shall  not 
speak  such  words  as  those  for  the  speaking  of  which  he 
has  been  arrested  nor  shall  he  question  any  matters 
touching  our  holy  catholic  faith  under  penalty  of  being 
rigorously  punished  and  in  addition  I  condemn  him 
to  pay  the  costs  of  this  trial,  and  this  is  my  definitive 
sentence  so  judging  and  I  pronounce  and  order  it  in 
and  by  this  writing  El  Dor  Estevan  de  Portillo 

"  In  Mexico  the  fourth  of  december  of  the  year  one 
thousand  five  hundred  and  sixty  eight  was  given 
and  pronounced  this  definitive  sentence  of  the  above 
tenor  by  the  aforesaid  sor  doctor  barbosa  (sic)  provisor 
and  vicar  general  of  this  Archbishopric  of  Mexico  in  the 

[148] 


NOTES 


presence  of  me  joan  de  avendano  apostolic  notary 
public  and  of  the  audiencia  of  this  Archbishopric  of 
mexico  witnesses  el  bachiller  villagomez  and  juan 
vergara 

johan  de  avendano" 

The  ancient  record  ends  with  the  statement  that  this 
sentence  was  communicated  to  Peyrens  on  the  day  that 
it  was  pronounced,  and  that  he  "consented  and  did 
consent"  with  it — y  dixo  que  consentia  y  consentid. 


NOTE    III 
LEGEND  OF   THE   ADUANA  DE  STO.  DOMINGO 

CARVED  over  an  arch  half-way  up  the  main  stairway 
of  the  ex-Aduana — the  building  no  longer  is  used  as  a 
custom-house — still  may  be  read  Don  Juan's  acrostic 
inscription  that  sets  forth  the  initials  of  Dona  Sara  de 
Garcia  Somera  y  Acuna,  the  lady  for  whom  he  so 
furiously  toiled: 

Siendo  prior  del  Consulado  el  coronel  Dn  Juan  Gutierrez  Rubin 
de  Celis,  caballero  del  Orden  de  Sntiago,  y  consules  Dn 

Garza  de  Alvarado  del  mismo  Orden,  y  Dn   Lucas 
Serafin  Chacon,  se  acab6  la  fabrica  de  esta 

Aduana  en  28  de  Junio  de  1731. 


NOTE    IV 
LEGEND  OF   THE  CALLE    DE   LA   CRUZ  VERDE 

SENOR  ARELLANO  has.  documented  the  legend  of  the 
Green  Cross  by  adding  to  his  sympathetic  version  of  it 
the  following  note :  "  Some  years  ago  I  saw  in  either  the 

[  149] 


LEGENDS     OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

church  of  San  Miguel  or  the  church  of  San  Pablo,  set 
aside  in  a  corner,  a  bronze  tablet  that  once  had  rested 
upon  a  tomb.  On  it  was  the  inscription,  '  Dona  Maria 
de  Aldarafuente  Lara  y  Segura  de  Manrique.  Agosto 
1 1  de  1 573  anos.  R.  I.  P. ' ;  and  beneath  the  inscription 
was  a  large  Latin  cross.  Probably  the  tablet  was 
melted  up.  When  I  went  to  look  for  it,  later,  it  was 
not  to  be  found." 

This  record  testifies  to  the  truth  of  the  pretty  legend 
to  the  extent  that  it  proves  that  the  hero  and  the 
heroine  of  it  were  real  people,  and  that  their  wedding 
really  took  place ;  and  it  also  testifies  to  the  melancholy 
fact — since  Don  Alvaro  came  to  Mexico  in  the  train 
of  the  Viceroy  Don  Gaston  de  Peralta,  whose  entry  into 
the  Capital  was  made  on  September  17,  1566 — that 
their  wedded  life  lasted  less  than  seven  years.  The 
once  stately  but  now  shabby  house  whereon  the  cross 
is  carved  is  in  what  anciently  was  a  dignified  quarter 
of  the  City;  and  the  niche  for  a  saint,  vacant  now, 
above  the  cross  is  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  old 
houses  in  which  people  of  condition  lived.  The  cross 
is  unique.  No  other  house  in  the  City  is  ornamented 
in  this  way. 

NOTE    V 
LEGEND    OF    THE    MUJER    HERRADA 

DOUBTLESS  this  legend  has  for  its  foundation  an 
ancient  real  scandal:  that — being  too  notorious  to  be 
hushed  up — of  set  purpose  was  given  to  the  public  in  a 
highly  edifying  way.  Certainly,  the  story  seems  to 
have  been  put  in  shape  by  the  clerics — the  class  most 
interested  in  checking  such  open  abuses — with  the 

[150] 


NOTES 


view  of  driving  home  a  deterrent  moral  by  exhibiting 
so  exemplary  a  punishment  of  sin. 

Substantially  as  in  the  popular  version  that  I  have 
used  in  my  text,  Don  Francisco  Sedano  (circa  1760) 
tells  the  story  in  his  delightful  "  Noticias  de  Mexico  "- 
a  gossiping  chronicle  that,  on  the  dual  ground  of 
kindly  credulity  and  genial  inaccuracy,  cannot  be 
commended  in  too  warm  terms. 

"In  the  years  1670-1680,  as  I  have  verified," 
Sedano  writes,  "  there  happened  in  this  City  of  Mexico 
a  formidable  and  fearful  matter";  and  without  farther 
prelude  he  tells  the  story  practically  as  I  have  told  it, 
but  in  much  plainer  language,  until  he  reaches  the 
climax:  when  the  priest  and  the  blacksmith  try  to 
awaken  the  woman  that  she  may  enjoy  the  joke  with 
them.  Thence  he  continues:  "When  a  second  call  failed 
to  arouse  her  they  looked  at  her  more  closely,  and 
found  that  she  was  dead;  and  then,  examining  her  still 
more  closely,  they  found  nailed  fast  to  her  hands  and 
to  her  feet  the  four  iron  shoes.  Then  they  knew  that 
divine  justice  thus  had  afflicted  her,  and  that  the  two 
blacks  were  demons.  Being  overcome  with  horror, 
and  not  knowing  what  course  to  follow  in  a  situation 
so  terrible,  they  agreed  to  go  together  for  counsel  to 
Dr.  Don  Francisco  Ortiz,  cura  of  the  parish  church  of 
Santa  Catarina;  and  him  they  brought  back  with  them. 
On  their  return,  they  found  already  in  the  house 
Father  Jos6  Vidal,  of  the  Company  of  Jesus,  and  with 
him  a  Carmelite  monk  who  also  had  been  summoned. 
[By  whom  summoned  is  not  told.]  All  of  them  to- 
gether examining  the  woman,  they  saw  that  she  had  a 
bit  in  her  mouth  [the  iron  shoes  on  her  hands  and  feet 
are  not  mentioned]  and  that  on  her  body  were  the 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

welts  left  by  the  blows  which  the  demons  had  given  her 
when  they  took  her  to  be  shod  in  the  form  of  a  mule. 
The  three  aforesaid  [the  Cura,  Father  Vidal,  and  the 
Carmelite]  then  agreed  that  the  woman  should  be 
buried  in  a  pit,  that  they  then  dug,  within  the  house; 
and  that  upon  all  concerned  in  the  matter  should  be 
enjoined  secrecy.  The  terrified  priest,  trembling  with 
fear,  declared  that  he  would  change  his  life — and  so 
left  the  house,  and  never  appeared  again." 

Sedano  documents  the  story  with  facts  concerning 
the  reputable  clerics  concerned  in  it,  writing:  "Dr. 
Ortiz,  cura  de  Santa  Catarina,  being  internally  moved 
[by  what  he  had  seen]  to  enter  into  religion,  entered 
the  Company  of  Jesus;  wherein  he  continued,  greatly 
esteemed  and  respected,  until  his  death  at  the  age  of 
eighty-four  years.  He  referred  always  to  this  case 
with  amazement.  A  memoir  of  Father  Jose  Vidal, 
celebrated  for  his  virtues  and  for  his  preaching,  was 
written  by  Father  Juan  Antonio  de  Oviedo,  of  the 
Company  of  Jesus,  and  was  printed  in  the  College  of 
San  Yldefonso  in  the  year  1752.  In  that  memoir, 
chapter  viii,  p.  41,  this  case  is  mentioned;  a  record  of 
it  having  been  found  among  the  papers  of  Father 
Vidal."  Sedano  adds  that  he  himself  heard  the  case 
referred  to  in  a  Lenten  sermon  preached  by  a,  Jesuit 
Father  in  the  church  of  the  Profesa  in  the  year  1760. 

Sedano  farther  writes:  "  In  the  Calle  de  las  Rejas  de 
la  Balvanera  is  a  casa  de  vecindad  [tenement  house] 
that  formerly  was  called  the  Casa  del  Pujabante:  be- 
cause a  pujabante  and  tenazos  [farrier's  knife  and 
pincers]  were  carved  on  the  stone  lintel  of  the  doorway. 
This  carving  I  have  seen  many  times.  It  was  said  to 
mark  the  house  in  which  the  blacksmith  lived,  in 


NO.     7      PUERTA      FALSA      DE      SANTO      DOMINGO 


NOTES 


memory  of  the  shoeing  of  the  woman  there.  The  house 
[the  site  is  that  of  the  present  No.  5]  has  been  repaired 
and  the  carving  has  been  obliterated.  In  the  street 
of  the  Puerta  Falsa  de  Santo  Domingo,  along  the 
middle  of  which  anciently  ran  a  ditch,  facing  the 
Puerta  Falsa,  was  an  old  tumble-down  house  [the  site 
is  that  of  the  present  No.  7]  wherein  lived,  as  I  was  told 
by  an  antiquarian  friend,  the  priest  and  the  woman. 
This  is  probable:  because  Father  Vidal  tells  that  the 
house  was  near  the  parish  church  of  Santa  Catarina; 
and  for  that  reason  Dr.  Ortiz,  the  cura  of  that  church, 
would  be  likely  to  make  notes  of  an  occurrence  in  his 
own  parish." 

NOTE    VI 
LEGEND    OF    THE    ACCURSED    BELL 

.  THIS  legend  affords  an  interesting  example  of  folk- 
growth.  As  told  by  Sefior  Obreg6n,  the  story  simply 
is  of  a  church  bell  "in  a  little  town  in  Spain"  that, 
being  possessed  by  a  devil,  rang  in  an  unseemly  fashion 
without  human  aid;  and  for  that  sin  was  condemned 
to  have  its  tongue  torn  out  and  to  be  banished  to 
Mexico.  As  told  by  Sefior  Arellano,  the  story  begins 
with  armor  that  was  devil-possessed  because  worn  by 
the  devil-possessed  Gil  de  Marcadante.  This  armor 
is  recast  into  a  cross  wherein  the  devils  are  held  prisoners 
and  harmless;  the  cross  is  recast  into  a  bell  of  which 
the  loosed  devils  have  possession — and  from  that  point 
the  story  goes  on  as  before.  As  told  in  verse  by 
Senor  Juan  de  Dios  Peza,  the  armor  is  devil-forged  to 
start  with;  and  is  charged  still  more  strongly  with 

[153] 


LEGENDS     OF    THE     CITY     OF     MEXICO 

devilishness  by  being  worn  in  succession  by  an  Infidel 
and  by  a  wicked  feudal  lord  before  it  comes  to  Gil  de 
Marcadante — from  whose  possession  of  it  the  story 
continues  as  before. 

A  fourth,  wholly  Spanish,  version  of  this  legend  is 
found  in  Becquer's  La  Cruz  del  Diablo.  In  this  version 
the  armor  belongs  in  the  beginning  to  one  Senor  del 
Segre,  whose  cruelties  lead  to  a  revolt  of  his  vassals 
that  ends  in  his  death  and  in  the  burning  of  his  castle — 
amid  the  ruins  of  which  the  armor  remains  hanging  on 
a  fire-blackened  pillar.  In  time,  bandits  make  their 
lair  in  the  ruined  castle.  While  a  hot  dispute  over 
their  leadership  is  in  progress  among  them  the  armor 
detaches  itself  from  the  pillar  and  stalks  into  the  midst 
of  the  wrangling  company.  From  behind  the  closed 
visor  a  voice  declares  that  their  leader  is  found.  Under 
that  leadership  the  bandits  commit  all  manner  of 
atrocities.  Again  the  country  folk  rally  to  fight 
for  their  lives.  Many  of  the  bandits  are  killed,  but  the 
leader  is  scatheless.  Swords  and  lances  pass  through 
the  armor  without  injuring  him.  In  the  blaze  of  burn- 
ing dwellings  the  armor  becomes  white-hot,  but  he  is 
unharmed.  A  wise  hermit  counsels  exorcism.  With 
this  spiritual  weapon  the  devil-leader  is  overcome  and 
captured;  and  within  the  armor  they  find — nothing  at 
all!  In  true  folk-story  fashion  the  narrative  rambles 
on  with  details  of  the  escape  and  recapture  of  the 
devil-armor  "  a  hundred  times."  In  the  end,  following 
again  the  wise  hermit's  counsel,  the  armor  is  cast  into 
a  furnace;  and  then,  being  melted,  is  refounded — to  the 
accompaniment  of  diabolical  shrieks  and  groans  of 
agony — into  a  cross.  A  curious  and  distinctive  feature 
of  this  version  is  that  the  devils  imprisoned  in  the  cross 

[154] 


NOTES 


retain  their  power  for  evil.  Prayers  made  before  that 
cross  bring  down  curses;  criminals  resort  to  it;  in  its 
neighborhood  is  peril  of  death  by  violence  to  honest 
men.  So  leaving  the  matter,  Becquer's  story  ends. 
The  scene  of  these  marvels  is  the  town  of  Deliver,  on 
the  river  Segre,  close  under  the  southern  slope  of  the 
Pyrenees.1 

Senor  Obreg6n  gives  what  is  known  of  the  bell's 
history  in  Mexico.  It  was  of  "medium  size";  the 
hanger  in  the  shape  of  an  imperial  crown  supported 
by  two  lions;  on  one  side,  in  relief,  the  two-headed  eagle 
holding  in  its  talons  the  arms  of  Austria;  on  the  other 
side  a  Calvario — Christ,  St.  John,  the  Virgin;  near  the 
lip,  the  words  "  Salve  Regina,"  and  the  legend:  "  Maese 
Rodrigo  me  fecit  1530."  From  the  unknown  time  of 
its  arrival  in  Mexico  until  the  last  quarter  of  the 
eighteenth  century  it  reposed  idly  in  one  of  the  corridors 
of  the  Palace.  There  it  was  found  by  the  Viceroy 
(1789-1794)  the  Conde  de  Revillagigedo ;  and  by  that 
very  energetic  personage,  to  whom  idleness  of  any  sort 
was  abhorrent,  promptly  was  set  to  work.  In  accord- 
ance with  his  orders,  it  was  hung  in  a  bell-gable,  over 
the  central  doorway  of  the  Palace,  directly  above  the 
clock;  and  in  that  position  it  remained,  very  honestly 


1 "  La  Cruz  del  Diablo,"  with  other  stories  of  a  like  sort  by 
Becquer,  all  very  well  worth  reading,  may  be  read  in  English 
in  the  accurate  translation  recently  made  by  Cornelia  Frances 
Bates  and  Katharine  Lee  Bates  under  the  title  Romantic 
Legends  of  Spain  (New  York,  Thomas  Y.  Crowell  &  Co.) ;  and 
in  the  original  Spanish,  with  the  assistance  of  scholarly  notes 
and  a  vocabulary,  in  the  collection  prepared  for  class  use  by 
Dr.  Everett  Ward  Olmsted  under  the  English  title  Legends 
and  Poems  by  Gustavo  Adolf o  Becquer  (Boston,  Ginn  &  Co.). 
ii  [i55] 


LEGHNDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

doing  its  duty  as  a  clock-bell,  for  more  than  seventy 
years.  During  the  period  of  the  French  intervention, 
in  December,  1867,  a  new  bell  was  installed  in  place  of 
it  and  orders  were  given  that  it  should  be  melted  down 
—possibly,  though  Senor  Obregon  gives  no  informa- 
tion on  this  point,  to  be  recast  into  cannon,  along  with 
the  many  church  bells  that  went  that  way  in  Mexico 
at  about  that  time.  Whatever  may  have  been  planned 
in  regard  to  its  transmutation  did  not  come  off — because 
the  liquid  metal  became  refractory  and  could  not  be 
recast.  As  this  curious  statement  of  fact  has  an 
exceptional  interest  in  the  case  of  a  bell  with  so  bad  a 
record,  I  repeat  it  in  Sefior  Obregon's  own  words: 
"Entonces  se  mando  fundirla;  mas  al  verificarlo  se  des- 
compuso  el  metal!" 

NOTE    VII 

LEGEND  OF  THE  CALLEJ6N  DEL  PADRE  LECUONA 

BY  a  natural  confusion  of  the  name  of  the  street  in 
which  the  dead  man  was  confessed  with  the  name  of 
the  priest  who  heard  his  confession,  this  legend  fre- 
quently is  told  nowadays  as  relating  not  to  Padre 
Lanza  but  to  Padre  Lecuona.  An  old  man  whom 
I  met  in  the  Callej6n  del  Padre  Lecuona,  when  I  was 
making  search  for  the  scene  of  the  confession,  told  me 
the  story  in  that  way — and  pointed  out  the  house  to 
me  in  all  sincerity.  Following  that  telling,  I  so  mixed 
the  matter  myself  in  my  first  publication  of  the  legend. 
Who  Padre  Lecuona  was,  or  why  the  street  was  named 
after  him,  I  have  not  discovered.  Probably  still  an- 
other legend  lurks  there.  Senor  Riva  Palacio  tells,  the 

[156] 


NOTES 


story  as  of  an  unnamed  friar  "  whom  God  now  holds 
in  his  glory,"  and  assigns  it  to  the  year  1731.  The 
motive  of  the  story  is  found  in  Spain  long  before  the 
oldest  date  assigned  to  it  in  Mexico.  The  wicked  hero 
of  Calderon's  play,  La  devotion  de  la  Cruz,  is  per- 
mitted to  purge  his  sinful  soul  by  confession  after 
death.  The  Padre  Lanza  whose  name  has  been  tacked 
fast  to  the  story — probably  because  his  well-known 
charitable  ministrations  to  the  poor  made  him  a  likely 
person  to  yield  to  the  old  woman's  importunities — was 
a  real  man  who  lived  in  the  City  of  Mexico,  greatly 
loved  and  respected,  in  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Sefior  Roa  Barcena  fixes  the  decade  1820- 
1830  as  the  date  of  his  strange  adventure  with  a  dead 
body  in  which  was  a  living  soul. 

Aside  from  minor  variants,  two  distinct  versions  of 
this  legend  are  current.  That  which  I  have  given  in 
my  text  is  the  more  popular.  The  other,  less  widely 
known,  has  for  its  scene  an  old  house  in  the  Calle  de 
Olmedo — nearly  a  mile  away  from  the  Callej6n  del 
Padre  Lecuona,  and  in  a  far  more  ancient  quarter  of  the 
City.  Concisely  stated,  the  Calle  de  Olmedo  version 
is  to  this  effect : 

Brother  Mendo,  a  worthy  and  kind-hearted  friar, 
is  met  of  a  dark  night  in  the  street  by  a  man  who  begs 
him  to  come  and  hear  a  dying  person  confess.  The 
friar  wears  the  habit  of  his  Order,  and  from  his  girdle 
hangs  his  rosary.  He  is  led  to  a  house  near  by;  and 
finds  within  the  house  a  very  beautiful  woman,  richly 
clad  in  silks,  whose  arms  are  bound.  That  she  is  not 
in  a  dying  state  is  obvious,  and  the  friar  asks  for  an 
explanation.  For  answer,  the  man  tells  him  roughly: 
"  This  woman  is  about  to  die  by  violence,  J  must  give 

[157] 


LEGENDS     OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

her  death.  As  you  please,  wash  clean  her  sinful  soul 
— or  leave  it  foul!"  At  that,  he  yields,  and  her  con- 
fession begins.  It  is  so  prolonged  that  the  man,  losing 
patience,  ends  it  abruptly  by  thrusting  forth  the  friar 
from  the  house.  Through  the  closed  door  he  hears 
shrieks  and  tries  to  re-enter;  but  the  door  remains 
closed  firmly,  and  his  knocking  is  unheeded.  He  finds 
that  his  rosary  no  longer  is  at  his  girdle.  In  order  to 
recover  it,  and  to  allay  his  fears  for  the  woman's  safety, 
he  calls  a  watchman  to  aid  him  by  demanding  in  the 
name  of  the  law  that  the  door  shall  be  opened.  No 
response  is  made  from  within  to  their  violent  knocking ; 
and  an  old  woman,  aroused  by  it,  comes  out  from  a  near- 
by dwelling  and  tells  them  that  knocking  there  is  use- 
less— that  through  all  her  long  lifetime  she  has  lived 
beside  that  house,  and  that  never  through  all  her  long 
lifetime  has  that  house  been  inhabited.  The  watch- 
man— holding  his  lantern  close  to  the  door,  and  so 
perceiving  that  what  she  tells  is  verified  by  the  caked 
dust  that  fills  its  crevices  and  that  clogs  its  key-hole — 
is  for  abandoning  their  attempt  to  enter.  The  friar 
insists  that  they  must  enter:  that  his  rosary  is  within 
the  house ;  that  he  is  determined  to  recover  it ;  that  the 
door  must  be  forced.  Yielding  to  him,  the  watchman 
forces  the  door  and  together  they  enter:  to  find  a 
yellowed  skeleton  upon  the  floor;  scattered  around  it 
scraps  of  mouldering  silk;  in  the  eye-sockets  of  the 
skull  cobwebs — and  lying  across  that  yellowed  skeleton 
is  the  friar's  rosary!  Brother  Mendo  covers  his  face 
with  his  hands,  totters  for  a  moment,  and  then  falls 
dying  as  he  exclaims  in  horror:  "Holy  God!  I  have 
confessed  a  soul  from  the  other  life!"  And  the 
crowd  of  neighbors,  by  that  time  assembled,  cries  out; 

[158] 


NOTES 


"  Brother  Mendo  is  dead  because  he  has  confessed  the 
dead!" 

NOTE    VIII 
LEGEND    OF    THE    LIVING    SPECTRE 

THE  theme  of  this  legend — the  transportation  by 
supernatural  means  of  a  living  person  from  one  part  of 
the  world  to  another — is  among  the  most  widely  dis- 
tributed of  folk-story  motives.  In  The  Arabian 
Nights — to  name  an  easily  accessible  work  of  reference 
— it  is  found  repeatedly  in  varying  forms.  In  Irving 's 
Alhambra  a  version  of  it  is  given — "  Governor  Manco 
and  the  Old  Soldier" — that  has  a  suggestive  resem- 
blance to  the  version  of  my  text.  Distinction  is  given 
to  the  Mexican  story,  however,  by  its  presentment  by 
serious  historians  in  association  with,  and  as  an  in- 
cident of,  an  otherwise  well-authenticated  historical 
tragedy. 

That  Don  G6mez  Perez  Dasmarinas,  Governor  of  the 
Filipinas,  did  have  his  head  badly  split  open,  and  died 
of  it,  in  the  Molucca  Islands,  on  the  25th  of  October  in 
the  year  1 593,  and  that  on  that  same  day  announcement 
of  his  so-painful  ending  was  made  in  the  City  of  Mexico, 
are  statements  of  natural  and  of  supernatural  fact 
which  equally  rest  upon  authority  the  most  respectable : 
as  appears  from  Sefior  Obreg6n's  documentation  of  the 
legend,  that  I  here  present  in  a  condensed  form. 

Guarded  testimony  in  support  of  the  essential 
marvel  of  the  story  is  found  in  a  grave  historical  work 
of  the  period,  Sucesos  de  las  Islas  Filipinas,  written  by 
the  learned  Dr.  Antonio  de  Morga,  a  Judge  of  the 

[159] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY    OF    MEXICO 

Criminal  Court  of  the  Royal  Audiencia  and  sometime 
legal  adviser  (consultor)  to  the  Holy  Office  in  New  Spain. 
This  eminent  personage  notes  as  a  curious  fact  that  the 
news  of  the  murder  of  Don  Gomez  Perez  Dasmarinas 
was  known  on  the  Plaza  Mayor  of  the  City  of  Mexico 
on  the  very  day  that  the  murder  occurred ;  but  adds — 
his  legal  caution  seemingly  disposing  him  to  hedge  a 
little — that  he  is  ignorant  of  the  means  by  which  the 
news  was  brought. 

Without  any  hedging  whatever,  Fray  Gaspar  de 
San  Agustin,  in  his  Conquista  de  las  Islas  Philipinas 
(Madrid,  1698),  tells  the  whole  story  in  a  whole-hearted 
way.  According  to  Fray  Gaspar,  there  arrived  in 
Manila  about  the  year  1593,  Don  G6mez  Perez  Das- 
marinas  being  at  that  time  Governor,  ambassadors  sent 
by  the  King  of  Cambodia — one  of  them  a  Portuguese 
named  Diego  Belloso,  and  the  other  a  Spaniard  named 
Antonio  Barrientes — whose  mission  was  to  ask  the 
assistance  of  the  Spaniards  in  repelling  an  invasion  of 
Cambodia,  then  threatened  by  the  King  of  Siam.  As 
a  present  from  the  King  to  the  Governor,  the  em- 
bassy brought  "two  beautiful  elephants  (dos  hermosos 
elef antes),  which  were  the  first  ever  seen  in  Manila." 

Don  G6mez  Perez  promised  readily  the  assistance 
asked  for;  but  with  the  intention  of  using  a  pretended 
expedition  to  Cambodia  as  a  cloak  for  a  real  expedition 
to  seize  the  Moluccas.  To  this  end  he  assembled  an 
armada,  made  up  of  four  galleys  and  of  attendant 
smaller  vessels,  on  which  he  embarked  a  considerable 
military  force;  and,  along  with  the  soldiers,  certain 
"notable  persons  and  venerable  religious."  His  prep- 
arations being  completed,  he  sailed  from  Manila  on 
October  17,  1593.  A  week  later,  the  capitana  galley, 

[160] 


NOTES 


having  on  board  the  Governor,  was  separated  from  the 
fleet  by  a  storm  and  was  driven  to  take  shelter  in  the 
harbor  of  Punta  de  Azufre:  to  make  which  haven  the 
two  hundred  and  fifty  Chinese  rowers  were  kept  at 
their  work  with  so  cruel  a  rigor,  the  climax  of  other 
cruelties,  that  they  determined  to  mutiny.  Accord- 
ingly, on  the  night  of  their  arrival,  October  25th, 
"putting  on  white  tunics  that  they  might  know  each 
other  in  the  darkness,"  they  rose  against  the  Spaniards 
and  murdered  every  one  of  them — the  Governor,  as 
he  came  forth  from  his  cabin,  having  "  his  head  half 
split  open" — and  tossed  their  dead  bodies  overboard 
into  the  sea. 

Fray  Gaspar  points  out  that  Don  Gomez  PeYez  came 
to  that  bad  end  as  a  just  reward  from  heaven,  because 
on  various  occasions  he  arrogantly  had  "contended 
and  disputed "  with  the  Bishop  of  the  Filipinas;  and 
in  support  of  this  view  of  the  matter  he  declares  that 
the  Governor's  deserved  murder  "was  announced  in 
Manila  and  in  Mexico  by  supernatural  signs."  In 
Manila  the  announcement  was  symbolical :  "  On  the 
very  day  of  his  killing  there  opened  in  the  wall  [of  the 
Convent  of  San  Agustin]  on  which  his  portrait  was 
painted  a  crack  that  corresponded  precisely  with  the 
splitting  of  his  skull."  Of  the  other  announcement, 
that  described  in  the  legend,  he  writes  in  these  assured 
terms :  "  It  is  worthy  of  deep  ponderation  that  on  the 
very  same  day  on  which  took  place  the  tragedy  of 
G6mez  Perez  that  tragedy  was  known  in  Mexico  by  the 
art  of  Satan:  who,  making  use  of  some  women  in- 
clined to  such  agilities  (algunas  mujeres  inclinadas  a 
semejantes  agilidades} ,  caused  them  to  transplant  to  the 
Plaza  Mayor  of  the  City  of  Mexico  a  soldier  standing 

[1*1 3 


LEGENDS    OF    THE    CITY    OF    MEXICO 

guard  on  the  walls  of  Manila ;  and  this  was  accomplished 
so  unfelt  by  the  soldier  that  in  the  morning — when  he 
was  found  walking  sentry,  musket  in  hand,  in  that  city 
— he  asked  of  those  who  addressed  him  in  what  city 
he  was.  By  the  Holy  Office  it  was  ordered  that  he 
should  be  sent  back  to  these  islands:  where  many  who 
knew  him  have  assured  me  of  the  truth  of  this  event." 
Senor  Obreg6n's  comment,  at  once  non-committal 
and  impartial,  on  Fray  Caspar's  narrative  admits  of 
no  improvement.  I  give  it  in  his  own  words:  "  In  the 
face  of  the  asseveration  of  so  brainy  a  chronicler  (un 
cronista  tan  sesudo)  we  neither  trump  nor  discard  (no 
ponemos  ni  quitamos  rey)"',  to  which  he  adds  a  jingle 
advising  the  critical  that  he  gives  the  story  as  it  was 
given  to  him: 

"  Y  si  lector,  dijeres,  ser  comento, 
Como  me  lo  contaron  te  lo  cuento. " 


NOTE    IX 
LEGEND    OF    LA    LLORONA 

THIS  legend  is  not,  as  all  of  the  other  legends  are,  of 
Spanish-Mexican  origin :  it  is  wholly  Mexican — a  direct 
survival  from  primitive  times.  Seemingly  without 
perceiving — certainly  without  noting — the  connection 
between  an  Aztec  goddess  and  this  the  most  widely 
distributed  of  all  Mexican  folk-stories,  Senor  Orozco  y 
Berra  wrote: 

"The  Tloque  Nahuaque  [Universal  Creator]  created 
in  a  garden  a  man  and  a  woman  who  were  the  pro- 
genitors of  the  human  race.  .  .  .  The  woman  was  called 

[162] 


NOTES 


Cihuacohuatl,  'the  woman  snake,'  'the  female  snake'; 
Tititl,  'our  mother,'  or  'the  womb  whence  we  were 
born';  Teoyaominqui,  'the  goddess  who  gathers  the 
souls  of  the  dead ' ;  and  Quilaztli,  implying  that  she 
bears  twins.  She  appears  dressed  in  white,  bearing 
on  her  shoulder  a  little  cradle,  as  though  she  were 
carrying  a  child;  and  she  can  be  heard  sobbing  and 
shrieking.  This  apparition  was  considered  a  bad 
omen."  Referring  to  the  same  goddess,  Fray  Ber- 
nardino de  Sahagun  thus  admonished  (circa  1585)  the 
Mexican  converts  to  Christianity:  "Your  ancestors 
also  erred  in  the  adoration  of  a  demon  whom  they 
represented  as  a  woman,  and  to  whom  they  gave  the 
name  of  Cioacoatl.  She  appeared  clad  as  a  lady  of  the 
palace  [clad  in  white  ?].  She  terrified  (espantadd) ,  she 
frightened  (asombraba) ,  and  cried  aloud  at  night."  It 
is  evident  from  these  citations  that  La  Llorona  is  a 
stray  from  Aztec  mythology;  an  ancient  powerful 
goddess  living  on — her  power  for  evil  lessened,  but  still 
potent — into  modern  times. 

She  does  not  belong  especially  to  the  City  of  Mexico. 
The  belief  in  her — once  confined  to,  and  still  strongest 
in,  the  region  primitively  under  Aztec  domination — now 
has  become  localized  in  many  other  places  throughout 
the  country.  This  diffusion  is  in  conformity  with  the 
recognized  characteristic  of  folk-myths  to  migrate  with 
those  who  believe  in  them ;  and  in  the  case  of  La  Llorona 
reasonably  may  be  traced  to  the  custom  adopted  by  the 
Conquistadores  of  strengthening  their  frontier  settle- 
ments by  planting  beside  them  settlements  of  loyal 
Aztecs :  who,  under  their  Christian  veneering,  would  hold 
to — as  to  this  day  the  so-called  Christian  Indians  of  Mex- 
ico hold  to — their  old-time  faith  in  their  old-time  gods. 

[163] 


LEGENDS    OF    THE     CITY     OF    MEXICO 

Being  transplanted,  folk-myths  are  liable  to  modi- 
fication by  a  new  environment.  The  Fiery  Cow  of  the 
City  of  Mexico,  for  instance,  not  improbably  is  a  re- 
casting of  the  Basque  vaca  de  lumbre;  or,  possibly,  of 
the  goblin  horse,  El  Belludo,  of  Grenada — who  comes 
forth  at  midnight  from  the  Siete  Suelos  tower  of  the 
Alhambra  and  scours  the  streets  pursued  by  a  pack 
of  hell-hounds.  But  in  her  migrations,  while  given 
varying  settings,  La  Llorona  has  remained  unchanged. 
Always  and  everywhere  she  is  the  same:  a  woman 
clad  in  white  who  by  night  in  lonely  places  goes  wailing 
for  her  lost  children ;  a  creature  of  evil  from  whom  none 
who  hold  converse  with  her  may  escape  alive. 

Don  Vicente  Riva  Palacio's  metrical  version  of  this 
legend  seems  to  be  composite :  a  blending  ot  the  primi- 
tive myth  with  a  real  tragedy  of  Viceregal  times.  In- 
troductorily,  he  tells  that  for  more  than  two  hundred 
years  a  popular  tale  has  been  current  in  varying  forms 
of  a  mysterious  woman,  clad  in  white,  who  runs  through 
the  streets  of  the  City  at  midnight  uttering  wailings 
so  keen  and  so  woful  that  whoever  hears  them  swoons 
in  a  horror  of  fear.  Then  follows  the  story:  Luisa, 
the  Wailer,  in  life  was  a  woman  of  the  people,  very 
beautiful.  By  her  lover,  Don  Muno  de  Montes  Claros, 
she  had  three  children.  That  he  might  make  a  marriage 
with  a  lady  of  his  own  rank,  he  deserted  her.  Through 
a  window  of  his  house  she  saw  him  at  his  marriage 
feast;  and  then  sped  homeward  and  killed — with  a 
dagger  that  Don  Muno  had  left  in  her  keeping — her 
children  as  they  lay  sleeping.  Her  white  garments  all 
spattered  with  their  blood,  she  left  her  dead  children 
and  rushed  wildly  through  the  streets  of  the  City- 
shrieking  in  the  agony  of  her  sorrow  and  her  sin.  In  the 

[164] 


NOTES 


end,  "  a  great  crowd  gathered  to  see  a  woman  garroted 
because  she  had  killed  her  three  children";  and  on  that 
same  day  "  a  grand  funeral  procession"  went  with  Don 
Mufio  to  his  grave.  And  it  is  this  Luisa  who  goes 
shrieking  at  night  through  the  streets  of  the  City  even 
now. 

My  friend  Gilberto  Cano  is  my  authority  for  the 
version  of  the  legend — the  popular  version — that  I 
have  given  in  my  text.  It  seems  to  me  to  preserve, 
in  its  awed  mystery  and  in  its  vague  fearsomeness,  the 
very  feeling  with  which  the  malignant  Aztec  goddess 
assuredly  was  regarded  in  primitive  times. 


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